Exclusive: Rivigo’s Gazal Kalra quits the company’s board

Gazal Kalra, the co-founder of tech-enabled logistics firm Rivigo Services Pvt. Ltd, has resigned from the company’s board of directors, a filing with the Registrar of Companies stated.

According to the document filed in July, she resigned on 22 June this year with immediate effect.

When contacted by TechCircle, Kalra messaged that she is still part of Rivigo but is on maternity leave.

“I am on maternity leave of absence starting 18 August and became a proud mother to a daughter on 5 September. The board requires BAU (business as usual) in my absence,” her text message read.

Email queries and messages sent to Rivigo's other co-founder Deepak Garg on 21 September and investors SAIF Partners and Warburg Pincus on 26 September, seeking comments, did not elicit a response at the time of filing this report.

In January this year, fashion portal Myntra’s co-founder Mukesh Bansal had quit Rivigo’s board, the firm’s filings with the RoC showed.

In the same month, VCCircle had reported that the Gurugram-based logistics company had raised Rs 322.5 crore ($50 million then) in a Series D funding round. The investment, which valued the company at close to Rs 6,000 crore ($945 million), brought the company close to unicorn status.

In February, TechCircle had reported that senior-level executives had quit Rivigo, including its chief technology officer Hemant Khandelwal and head of engineering Swamy Seetharaman.

Founded in 2014 by Garg and Kalra, Rivigo offers pan-India delivery services to e-commerce, pharmaceuticals, automobiles, cold-chain and fast-moving consumer goods players. Garg is an IIT Kanpur alumnus who was working with McKinsey & Company before co-founding the venture, while Kalra, an alumnus of the Stanford Graduate School of Business, also had a stint at McKinsey.

Besides SAIF Partners and Warburg Pincus, venture debt provider Trifecta is also an investor in Rivigo. Earlier, the company operated under the name TrucksFirst Services Pvt. Ltd.

The logistics company had raised $9.6 million (then Rs 61.8 crore) as part of its Series A round from SAIF Partners and others in April 2015.

In December 2015, it secured $30 million (then Rs 200 crore) as part of a Series B round from existing investor SAIF Partners and others. 

Rivigo’s revenues for the financial year 2016-17 shot up by 170% to Rs 401.8 crore from Rs 149 crore in the previous financial year, ROC filings showed. However, its losses too went up substantially to Rs 137 crore from just Rs 5.5 crore.

The RoC filings also showed that the company’s total expenses had tripled to Rs 525 crore. Its other expenses also increased to Rs 388 crore, while finance costs climbed to Rs 23 crore from Rs 6.78 crore during the period under consideration.

Rivigo has not filed its financial statement for 2017-18.