Swiggy Instamart appoints Flipkart’s Amitesh Jha as CEO

Swiggy on Thursday announced the appointment of Amitesh Jha as the Chief Executive Officer of its quick commerce business, Instamart.

According to Swiggy, its co-founder and current CEO of Swiggy Instamart, Phani Kishan, will assume a broader organization-wide role overseeing the company’s central growth unit and will work closely with and report to Swiggy Group CEO Sriharsha Majety.

Jha comes with over two decades of experience in operations, strategy, and product development for some of India’s well-known companies. Before joining Swiggy Instamart, Amitesh Jha was with Flipkart, where he played a key role in making Flipkart and e-commerce mainstream in India.

This is the second top-level appointment by Swiggy Instamart in August. Earlier this month, it appointed Sairam Krishnamurthy as Senior Vice President (SVP) and Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the firm.

The appointment comes at a time when Amazon is reportedly in talks with Swiggy to acquire the latter’s quick commerce business. Amazon is also eyeing entry into the quick commerce business in India soon.

Instamart holds the second spot among quick commerce players with a market share of 20-25% as of July, according to a report by brokerage firm UBS. Currently, Zomato-owned Blinkit leads the sector with a 40-45% share, while Zepto and BigBasket have 15-20% and 10-15% shares, respectively.

Swiggy, which is planning to file IPO papers with SEBI in the first week of September, was recently valued at $14.74 billion by its U.S. investor Baron Capital.

The company recorded Rs 5,476 crore in revenue from operations and a Rs 1,600 crore loss during the first three quarters of the financial year FY24. Entrackr had exclusively reported the financial numbers and a secondary pitch by the company in April.