Meet Karthik Gurumurthy, IIM alumni heading Swiggy Instamart who stepped down hinting at…

Karthik Gurumurthy, Head/ Senior Vice President at popular grocery delivery platform, has decided to step aside and go on a sabbatical after having played a key role in establishing the business. Gurumurthy, an Indian Institute of Management Bangalore alumni, announced his decision in a long LinkedIn post where he also recollected and shared his experience in building Instamart.

Karthik has been heading the Instamart business since August 2020. “Three years back when the world was just recovering from CoVid, I travelled back to Hyderabad from Mumbai through the deserted roads across Maharashtra. The drive was long (around 11 hours) and my mind wandered thinking about the challenges ahead in my new role. I had never worked in a e-commerce/ tech company, never headed a business and never taken a business through a 0 to 1 stage,” he recollected in the social media post.

He shared experience and challenges in keeping stores open during Covid-19, particularly the second wave of the pandemic in India. “Today its a large business, almost a billion dollar business and am just humbled to see how big the business has grown to,” Gurumurthy said.

Gurumurthy revealed that he will come back afresh from the sabbatical to build something (0-1), seemingly hinting at starting a new venture. “I have loved being a part of this journey but this journey has been arduous with lot of compromises on physical & mental wellbeing. I plan to take a sabbatical now to come back afresh and build something (0-1), something which I have loved…,” he wrote.

Swiggy co-founder Phani Kishan Addepalli will take over the responsibility of heading Instamart from the outgoing executive. “The business will be spearheaded by Phani Kishan Addepalli , a great leader and our co-founder who will take this to next orbit,” Gurumurthy revealed in the same post.

Karthik Gurumurthy is a computer science engineering graduate from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS) Pilani and an MBA from IIM-B. He is a veteran who started his career with DaimlerChrysler Research Center India in 2004 and worked with some global names like Oracle, AT Kearney, Mondelez International and Cipla Health.