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Zepto has hired cryptocurrency firm Coinswitch’s Chief Financial Officer Ramesh Bafna to lead its finance division, replacing Jitendra Nagpal, who had joined the Y Combinator-backed quick-commerce startup barely two-and-a-half years ago.

Bafna, who had joined CoinSwitch in June last year, was previously the CFO at Sequoia-backed Zilingo and Flipkart-owned Myntra.

Nagpal, vice president of finance at healthtech major PharmEasy, plans to establish a venture capital fund to back startups across sectors shortly, and will provide consultancy services to startups meanwhile. His notice period could end as early as next month, according to two people aware of the developments.

“Ramesh is a best-in-class ecommerce CFO and he will build a best-in-class finance team at Zepto,” Aadit Palicha, CEO of Zepto, said in a statement issued after YourStory reached out to Zepto seeking confirmation on Nagpal’s exit.

“Through disciplined execution, Zepto is delivering incredible progress on growth and profitability. To take Zepto public in 2-3 years, we believe we need an incredible CFO and Ramesh is the right person for the job,” Palicha said.

Founded in 2021 by Palicha and Kaivalya Vohra, Zepto became one of the highest-funded quick-commerce startups in the country, giving intense competition to Swiggy Instamart and Zomato-owned Blinkit. It has raised $361 million so far from investors including Y Combinator, Nexus Venture Partners Global Founders Capital, and Glade Brook Capital, valued at close to $900 million.

Zepto is currently in the market to raise more funds, according to the persons mentioned earlier.

“Zepto is looking to secure more money given that quick commerce is a cash-intensive business. But we know that it is tough to raise money without disturbing the valuation in this market,” said one of the persons mentioned earlier.

Palicha denied the company was raising funds, stating that Zepto had sufficient cash in the bank.

The CFO shuffle comes as Zepto juggles with the tricky economics of quick commerce.

The startup recently introduced a scheduling service for groceries, while continuing to offer 10-minute deliveries as its core service. It has also expanded its offerings by launching a farmer engagement app to digitise supply chains and source a wider variety of fruits and vegetables. In April last year, it launched Zepto Cafe to deliver coffee and snacks within 10-20 minutes in attempt to diversify revenue sources.

CEO Palicha had told Moneycontrol last year that Zepto’s cash burn rate was much lower than that of companies with the same revenue scale, and that operating costs and discounts accounted for about 20% of that.

Zepto isn’t alone. Reliance-owned JioMart shut its express delivery operations last month. Mobility firm Ola closed Ola Dash in June last year. Other similar businesses including Swiggy’s Instamart, Zomato’s Blinkit, and Bigbasket’s BBNow are looking to increase order values and lengthen delivery timelines to cut losses.

YourStory reported last month that Swiggy had rebranded its morning grocery delivery service Supr Daily to InsanelyGood, doing away with the subscription model.

“We’re realising that to perfect this model and this category, we need to have a combination of both decades of experience—our leadership team of specialists has decades of experience in supply chain and growth, marketing and finance—and first-principles thinking, which we bring in with our fresh perspectives,” Palicha had said at YourStory’s TechSparks 2022.