Co-founder and chief technology officer (CTO) of Dunzo, Mukund Jha, is set to exit the firm, according to sources. The embattled quick commerce start-up has seen a spate of high-profile exits recently.

Jha joined the company in 2015 and worked alongside Biswas, Ankur Aggarwal, and Dalvir Suri.

However, the company has denied that Mukund Jha is leaving the company.

“Mukund remains an integral part of Dunzo’s leadership team. While we are restructuring the organisation, with new leaders driving key mandates, Mukund will continue to be an important part of the strategic leadership team, guiding and directing Dunzo’s future roadmap,” said Dunzo spokersperson.

This comes close on the heels of the exit of co-founder Dalvir Suri. He was involved in the company’s business-to-business delivery arm, Dunzo Merchant Services (DMS).

“Dalvir has been instrumental in building out every new line of business at Dunzo. He has been the key zero to one person from the founding team that just gets things Dun. He has been meaning to take a break for sometime now – and with 6+ years spent building Dunzo, he plans to move forward to pursuing new journeys,” said Dunzo co-founder and CEO Kabeer Biswas.

Conserving cash

The start-up has drastically reduced the scale of its quick commerce operations to conserve cash over the past year. It now doesn’t run its own dark stores but offers services through third-party grocery stores.

Dunzois also in the midst of a fundraise, lining up $25-30 million. The cash-strapped company has also taken organisational restructuring. Employees are yet to receive their July salary and a portion of their June pay. It paid August salaries through payroll financing app OneTap. It will also be vacating its current office to move into a smaller one.

The company has shut down dark stores. It has planned to give up its office space in Bengaluru and even fired hundreds of employees across three rounds of lay-offs.

Since 2015, Dunzo has raised close to $500 million from Reliance, Google, Lightrock, Lightbox, Blume Ventures and several others. Reliance is the largest shareholder with a 25.8 per cent stake in the company, according to Tracxn.

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