Zepto Cafe CXO Shashank Sharma exits firm to join FoodStories

Shashank Shekhar Sharma, CXO at Zepto Cafe, has exited the quick commerce unicorn to join gourmet retail chain FoodStories as its Chief Executive Officer (CEO).

According to Sharma's LinkedIn page, he joined the Mumbai-based gourmet mordern retail chain in October, following a three-year stint at Zepto.

A Foodstories spokesperson confirmed the development. Zepto did not respond to YourStory's queries on succession plan for the Cafe vertical.

At Zepto, Sharma was responsible for overseeing Café operations, its footprint expansion, equipment procurement, and quality control, along with the end-to-end customer experience of Zepto Café.

Started in 2024, Zepto Cafe expanded rapidly across multiple pincodes, integrating food and beverages into the company's dark store network. The vertical was later rolled out as a standalone app in December last year, around the same time Sharma was elevated from Senior Vice President (SVP) to CXO.

In February, Zepto CEO and Co-founder Aadit Palicha said that Zepto Cafe had surpassed 75,000 daily orders, underscoring the segment's early traction.

However, cracks started to show earlier this year when the startup had to temporarily shut operations in 44 of its newly-launched stores across seven cities in North India due to supply chain constraints. The effort was primarily undertaken to rein in the company's high cash burn as it looked to re-open the stores later.

The change in Zepto Cafe's leadership comes at a time when the quick food delivery is seeing traction from multiple players operating in the market. Blinkit-backed Bistro and Accel-backed Swish have been expanding across pincodes in Bengaluru, with the former being live in multiple cities.