Eternal Shares Hit Five-Month Low as Blinkit CFO Vipin Kapooria Resigns

Eternal shares hit 3% to over five-month low after the resignation of Blinkit chief financial officer Vipin Kapooria.

Vipin Kapooria, Blinkit's Chief Financial Officer (CFO), has left and is expected to return to his previous job, e-commerce giant Flipkart. Kapooria's departure comes less than a year after he joined the company. It also comes at a time when competition in the quick-commerce sector is growing.

After a significant gap, Blinkit, a food delivery and quick-commerce firm, appointed Kapooria as its Chief Financial Officer (CFO), marking the first time the company has a full-time designated CFO since Amit Sachdeva left. Sachdeva left the organization after serving as CFO and head of finance from 2019 to 2022.

Following reports that Blinkit’s CFO, Vipin Kapooria, had decided to move on from the company. Eternal shares of the Company slid as much as 2.6% on Tuesday to an intraday low of Rs 275.55 on the BSE, sinking to their lowest level in more than five months.

His appointment followed a major funding round for Blinkit, which Eternal had described as its most important business division, and came weeks after the company raised ₹8,500 crore, or about $1 billion, through a qualified institutional placement.

Kapooria's departure coincides with heightened competition in India's fast-moving commerce industry. Currently leading the market, Blinkit is up against more competition from Amazon Now, Flipkart Minutes, Tata Group's BigBasket, Zepto, and Swiggy's Instamart. In the near future, the top three players: Blinkit, Instamart, and Zepto are anticipated to enter public markets, which would be a major turning point for a sector that only began to take shape five or six years ago.

At present, Quick commerce has quickly changed from being just an add-on to a consumer need, leading to significant investment in the industry. Despite having sizable cash reserves, Blinkit, Swiggy, and Zepto have collectively spent close to ₹9,000 crore over the last nine to eleven months.

The companies Eternal and Flipkart did not immediately reply to demands for comment, and it is still unknown who would succeeed Kapooria as the chief financial officer of Blinkit.