Dear All,
Whenever I’ve been asked about the things that I’m most grateful for in the Swiggy journey, I’ve always talked about the camaraderie between founders as a constant. In a world where many partnerships (professional or personal) go through ebbs and flows, having a strong foundation between co-founders is a very underrated superpower for startups.
Nandy and I have known each other for 21 years now, since he was scared to even enter my wing in college as a freshman. We ended up as really good friends through being a part of the same club, and kept in touch over the years. When I decided to come back to India after my job to start up, he was my only connect to the world of startups as he kept moving from one startup idea to another over the years.
Needless to say, I kept jamming with him on business ideas that I was working on independently for reality checks. When I decided to wind down my original business idea, he was coincidentally winding down one of the ideas he was working on too. We then organically kept talking about a bunch of ideas, and ended up building our first startup together, Bundl (which we had to wind down too 🙂 . After much cajoling, I convinced Nandy to attempt failing one more time on the business idea that we know as Swiggy today. Little did we know that we were signing up for the ride of a lifetime!
One of the things I love most about our culture is how we’ve always been willing to tinker and pioneer things that belong in the future. Nandy was right there at the start, helping architect that DNA, and he’s never stopped wandering since. If you look at some of our biggest bets – whether it’s food delivery as we see it today, our earliest stabs at quick commerce, or bringing Dineout into the fold – Nandy’s fingerprints are all over them. Innovation however, always comes with high failure rates too, but that never deterred Nandy as he’s always loved playing for the love of the game. Always excited to see how consumers react, always dreaming about potential bolt-ons to existing ideas, he made us all see horizons we didn’t know existed ( sometimes so far out, we were convinced he’d gone off the grid 😀 ).
After more than a decade building and wandering inside Swiggy’s areas of interest, Nandy started talking to me recently about his strong desire to explore completely unrelated spaces.
Given the stability of the org and it’s readiness for the future, and his passions, we agreed the timing was right and that means he’ll be moving on from Swiggy. It’s undoubtedly the end of an era for Swiggy and while I know I ( and Swiggy ) will miss having him around for longer on the ride, I am full of excitement for what he does next and wish him many loving explorations of new crazy ideas!
As all the memories shared over the last 12 years flash before my eyes, I can’t help but feel so incredibly grateful for the trust, the inspiration ( on thinking big, like really big ), the shared experiences through the crazy rollercoaster that Swiggy has been, and a friendship I know will be one of the most cherished forever. Life is all about creating core memories, and the memory of building something nice, warm, special, together will be in the elite leagues of the core memory chart for me.
Thank you for everything, Nandy. Goodbye and shine on!
Harsha
