Zomato's marketing head Alok Jain quits, may start own venture

Restaurant, event listing & review site Zomato.com's CMO Alok Jain has quit the company in less than a year in the job as per a personal tweet. The company spokesperson confirmed the development adding that nobody has joined in his place yet.

"I am exploring some options right now including starting my own venture, but haven't frozen on anything yet," Jain who has been a serial entrepreneur told Techcircle.in.

Prior to this, Jain founded a mobile and web app firm Unyqe, consulting firm specialising in digital marketing solutions Think Net, digital photo printing and logistics service PhotoMasti and apparel e-commerce venture Teepsy.com.

He's also had a short stint of less than six months at Smile Group's daily deals site DealsAndYou.com as its CMO and GE Capital as a territory manager responsible for developing sales channel of the auto finance division.

His movement comes at a time when Zomato has been swiftly expanding its services internationally. It recently ventured into Chile taking its total city count to 13 across the globe.

The company has raised $53.5 million in funding to date, the most recent one being $37 million that it had raised from Sequoia Capital and existing investor Info Edge, which runs a slew of consumer internet portals, including Naukri.com. According to Techcircle.in estimates, Sequoia Capital picked around 17.2 per cent stake as part of the latest investment, giving Zomato a post-money valuation of around Rs 1,000 crore or around $158 million (back then).

For the full year ended March 31, 2014, Zomato reported around 2.6x growth in its operating revenues to Rs 30.6 crore compared with Rs 11.38 crore a year ago. The operating EBITDA loss also widened to Rs 41.28 crore from Rs 10.03 crore last year.

Zomato had recently acquired New Zealand-based Menu Mania Ltd, the company behind the restaurant discovery and reviews site MenuMania.co.nz, for an undisclosed amount.