Crofarm, Urban Company lose top executives to Covid-19

As India continues to battle the second wave of Covid-19, two top startup executives have lost their lives to the pandemic.    

Prashant Jain, co-founder of agritech startup Crofarm, succumbed to the pandemic, as per a LinkedIn post by the startup’s CEO Varun Khurana. 

Jain had moved on from Crofarm in February 2020 to pursue other interests. Jain and Khurana had in 2014 set up app-based grocery delivery service Mygreenbox, which was later acquired by SoftBank backed online grocery platform Grofers. After working with Grofers, the duo started their second venture, Crofarm, in 2016. 

This is what Khurana had to say about his fellow co-founder and friend: 

The graduate of Sikkim Manipal University has previously served as the chief operating officer of online grocery store MyGrahak. He has also held various roles in the information technology domain in Vishal Retail and retail brand Lifestyle. 

Separately, Mohit Agrawal, director of engineering at on-demand services marketplace Urban Company, passed away due to Covid-19, as per a tweet from the startup’s CEO Abhiraj Bhal.  

@urbancompany_UC has setup the Mohit Agrawal COVID Relief Fund, in the memory of our departed colleague @agr_mohit . This fund will be used for helping our service partners, their families and our community with medical assistance and bereavement support.https://t.co/Gg7KN0zvkv pic.twitter.com/nhhEhTsfMW

— Abhiraj Singh Bhal (@abhirajbhal) April 30, 2021

Urban Company has set up a Mohit Agrawal Covid Relief Fund, which will receive a corpus of Rs 1 crore from founders and employees to provide medical assistance and bereavement support to service providers on the app and their families.  

Agrawal had joined the company in 2015 from ibibo Group. During his stint at Urban Company, he worked on data engineering, development platform, infrastructure and security for the platform. 

A graduate of Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology, Allahabad, Agrawal has also served in Vizury and NetApp.