Udaan CTO Gaurav Bhalotia to exit as B2B startup rejigs units, roles

Udaan’s chief technology officer (CTO) Gaurav Bhalotia is leaving the company as the B2B commerce platform restructures a number of internal roles and units.

The Lightspeed Venture and Microsoft-backed unicorn did not name a successor to Bhalotia, instead saying that the technology vertical would be split into separate “Product” and “Engineering” functions. While Siddharth Reddy will lead the engineering team, Abhilash Pillai will head product management. Both will report to cofounder and chief executive Vaibhav Gupta and join the executive management team.

Bhalotia was vice president of engineering at Flipkart and also worked at Oracle prior to Udaan, according to his LinkedIn profile.


The company is also combining its ‘Essentials’ vertical, encompassing fast moving consumer goods, staples and pharmaceutical categories, with its ‘Discretionary’ vertical, which includes general merchandise, lifestyle and electronics categories. The combined entity will be overseen by Uday Bhaskar, who currently heads the ‘Discretionary’ division. Vivek Gupta, who led the ‘Essentials’ vertical, will cease to work in an operational capacity and become an advisor to the board, the firm said in a statement.

In 2022, Udaan saw the highest number of exits among senior executives across the tech and startup ecosystem, followed by mobility firm Ola and hospitality startup Oyo, according to data from executive talent search firm Longhouse Consulting.

Started by Amod Malviya, Vaibhav Gupta and Sujeet Kumar, Udaan has raised more than $350 million in debt and through convertible notes over the past year and a half, including $120 million in convertible notes and debt round in October 2022. The firm had let go of 300-350 on-roll employees and a significant chunk of its contract workforce, for a total layoff count of over 1,000 people, in November 2022.

In fiscal year 2022, Udaan’s revenue from operations jumped 70% to Rs 9,943.8 crore. Net loss widened to Rs 3,075.8 crore from Rs 2,503.3 crore the previous year.