NDTV brings Sumeet Singh from Rocket Internet for food e-store Smartcooky

NDTV has brought in Sumeet Singh, former CEO of Rocket Internet-backed Daraz, to head its yet-to-launch health food e-store Smartcooky.

Singh will be CEO of the the media house's marketplace for health foods and personal care products.

"He has incubated a horizontal marketplace funded by Rocket Internet in Bangladesh. Prior to that he had worked with Bain India. We have no doubt that he will get Smartcooky off to a great start," Seema Chandra, MD, Smartcooky, said in a statement.

Singh, an alumnus of University of Amsterdam and IIM Calcutta, has also worked at Bain and Infosys.

Last month, Smartcooky received an undisclosed amount in funding from Vandana Luthra, founder of health and wellness firm VLCC Health Care Ltd.

Prior to that, it raised an undisclosed amount in angel investment at a valuation of $12 million (Rs 80 crore) in December 2015. The angel investors include Rajan Anandan (Google India & South Asia, MD), Pramod Bhasin (former CEO of Genpact), Siddharth Pai (son of former Infosys CFO and chairman of Manipal Global Education Services, Mohandas Pai, who is an angel investor in his own right), and Manvinder Singh Banga (former Unilever Plc board member and currently senior partner with private investor Clayton Dubilier & Rice).

Smartcooky will draw on NDTV's current food site, which creates original content in the food and wellness space and claims to get almost 3 million unique visitors a month.

Daraz was started in Pakistan three years ago as an online fashion e-tailer, and later on expanded its operations to Bangladesh and Myanmar. Since then, it has expanded to become a marketplace for electronics, home appliances, fashion and other categories.

In September last year, the company raised $55 million led by the UK government's development finance institution, CDC Group.