Zomato names four women members to its board
Aparna Popat, Gunjan Tilak Raj Soni, Namita Gupta and Sutapa Banerjee are the new independent board members
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Bengaluru: In a bid to create further boardroom diversity, online foodtech startup Zomato on Friday announced the appointment of four new women independent members to its board of directors.
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Zomato’s board, which was largely driven by investors, will now have the services of badminton player and ex-Olympian Aparna Popat; former Zalora Group chief executive officer Gunjan Tilak Raj Soni; Airveda founder Namita Gupta; and former head of private wealth business at ABN Amro Bank NV (India) Sutapa Banerjee.
With this reshuffle, the IPO-bound startup has five independent members on its board. Apart from founder Deepinder Goyal, the other members on Zomato’s board are Info Edge founder Sanjeev Bikhchandani; senior vice-president at Ant Group Douglas Feagin and independent director Kaushik Dutta.
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“At Zomato, we have been working on making our company more inclusive and diverse for years. Be it through initiatives such as an equal parental leave policy for men, women, same sex, surrogate or adoptive parents; or period/menstruation leaves. And up until now, we had a largely investor-run board. But today, I’m elated to share that we have five independent members on our board of eight people, four of whom are women," Goyal announced on Twitter.
Goyal added that more than gender diversity, the company wanted to achieve “cognitive diversity" on its board; and was able to achieve that.
In preparation of its much-awaited public listing, the company amended its memorandum of association earlier this month to become a public limited company, renaming itself Zomato Ltd.
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As a part of its pre-IPO fundraise, Zomato shored up close to $910 million from more than 10 investors, including Baillie Gifford, Luxor Capital, Steadview, D1 Capital, Mirae Asset, Kora Management, Fidelity Management and Research and Tiger Global Management.
The primary pre-IPO fundraise valued Zomato at $5.4 billion. Now, the company looks to raise $1 billion at a valuation of $6-8 billion through the public listing, according to several media reports.
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