Zipline has employed departing Verily CFO and Tesla veteran Deepak Ahuja as its first chief enterprise and monetary officer, an appointment that comes because the drone supply and logistics startup accelerates its world growth in Africa, the USA and different areas.
Ahuja, who’s leaving his publish at Alphabet’s unit Verily Life Sciences, will begin within the new function September 30. (Verily, which stated Friday it raised $1 billion, additionally introduced Ahuja was leaving the corporate.) Ahuja will oversee Zipline’s world monetary operations comparable to finance, accounting, investor relations and world gross sales. The function won’t embrace Africa, a area the place Zipline received its begin and continues to function in Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and Rwanda.
Daniel Marfo, who is predicated in Ghana and has been with Zipline since 2019, will proceed to supervise current operations within the area to keep up continuity there, in response to the corporate. Marfo was promoted to senior vice chairman of Zipline’s Africa operations in 2020.
Zipline additionally operates in Japan and in the USA, together with Arkansas and North Carolina. The corporate is increasing to Utah later this yr by a partnership with Intermountain Well being and introduced plans to start operations with Multicare Well being System in Washington beginning in 2024.
Ahuja will deal with constructing Zipline’s enterprise in the USA and different areas globally, the corporate advised TechCrunch.
Ahuja involves Zipline with a long time within the monetary world, most just lately as CFO at Verily Life Sciences. Maybe his most seen function was as Tesla’s first CFO, a place he held from 2008 to 2015 after which once more from 2017 to 2019. Throughout his tenure at Tesla, Ahuja was on the helm when it turned a publicly traded firm and after years of losses finally turned worthwhile.
His appointment alerts Zipline’s rising aspirations fueled by partnerships and $250 million in enterprise capital it raised final yr. (The corporate has raised $486 million thus far.)
The corporate, based in 2014, has developed the whole ecosystem from the drones and logistics software program to launch and touchdown system. It received its begin delivering medical provides comparable to blood and vaccines in Rwanda through its autonomous electrical drones. Zipline later expanded to Ghana and Nigeria, Japan and the USA. It additionally just lately obtained FAA Half 135 approval for its long-range drone supply service in the USA.
The corporate has additionally snagged a lot of partnerships prior to now two years that alerts aspirations to broaden inside and past healthcare. Zipline has partnerships with Toyota Group and UPS, it delivers medical gear and private protecting gear for Novant Well being in North Carolina and well being and wellness merchandise for Walmart.
In a weblog publish that accompanied the announcement, Ahuja appears significantly eager on Zipline’s vertical integration that enables it to ship large scale at excessive ranges of automation and integration, and at low operational value.
“The workforce has additionally labored laborious to make sure its answer has a tremendous and seamless consumer expertise, and creates minimal environmental noise,” he stated within the weblog publish. “Zipline is subsequently in a singular place to be a serious drive in fixing this drawback at scale. Actually, many executives within the healthcare and e-commerce area are starting to understand a systems-based answer just like the one provided by Zipline.”
