Building Instamart has taken a toll: Outgoing head of Swiggy’s quick commerce business Karthik Gurumurthy

“I have loved being a part of this journey but this journey has been arduous with a lot of compromises on physical and mental wellbeing,” he said in a post on professional networking platform Linkedin. “I plan to take a sabbatical now to come back afresh and build something (0-1), something which I have loved.”

ET first reported in its March 31 edition that he would be stepping aside as the head of Instamart, and that cofounder Phani Kishan Addepalli would be taking over.

Gurumurthy said some of Instamart’s dark stores, of which there are more than 300 across India, are already profitable.

“Today it is a large business, almost a billion dollar business and I am just humbled to see how big the business has grown..,” he said. “Today business continues to grow, great relationship with our brand partners and with few our stores already being profitable, it just feels how the seed germinated into a sampling [sic] and now a big strong tree.”

The development comes amid a slowdown in the quick commerce industry in terms of new user additions, in a tough funding environment.

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ET had reported on January 5 that _{Instamart’s new user additions had slowed significantly after crossing the 300,000 mark. Industry executives point out that beyond the top cities, which have high population density, it is difficult for dark stores to turn profitable.Investors are also shying away from investing in high-cash-burn businesses amid tightening macroeconomic conditions.}

Instamart is also lagging rival Zomato’s grocery delivery business Blinkit, according to a report by brokerage firm Jefferies. In the first six months of 2022, Instamart recorded a gross merchandise value (GMV) of $257 million compared to the $270 million GMV recorded by Zomato-owned Blinkit, the report added.

Since the relaunch of Zomato Gold, its loyalty programme, Zomato has started reclaiming the food-delivery market share it had lost to Swiggy in the second half of 2022, HSBC Global Research said in a note.