Zipline has employed departing Verily CFO and Tesla veteran Deepak Ahuja as its first chief enterprise and monetary officer, an appointment that comes as a outcome of the drone supply and logistics startup accelerates its worldwide enlargement in Africa, america and completely different areas.
Ahuja, who’s leaving his put up at Alphabet’s unit Verily Life Sciences, will start inside the mannequin new function September 30. (Verily, which mentioned Friday it raised $1 billion, additionally introduced Ahuja was leaving the agency.) Ahuja will oversee Zipline’s worldwide monetary operations reminiscent of finance, accounting, investor relations and worldwide gross sales. The function will not embrace Africa, a area the place Zipline acquired its start and continues to function in Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and Rwanda.
Daniel Marfo, who’s predicated in Ghana and has been with Zipline since 2019, will proceed to oversee current operations inside the area to take care of continuity there, in line with the agency. Marfo was promoted to senior vp of Zipline’s Africa operations in 2020.
Zipline additionally operates in Japan and in america, collectively with Arkansas and North Carolina. the agency is growing to Utah later this 12 months through a partnership with Intermountain well being and introduced plans to start operations with Multicare well being System in Washington starting in 2024.
Ahuja will suppose about constructing Zipline’s enterprise in america and completely different areas globally, the agency informed TechCrunch.
Ahuja includes Zipline with a long time inside the monetary world, most recently 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 as quickly as extra from 2017 to 2019. all through his tenure at Tesla, Ahuja was on the helm when it grew to become a publicly traded agency and after years of losses finally grew to become worthwhile.
His appointment indicators Zipline’s rising aspirations fueled by partnerships and $250 million in enterprise capital it raised final 12 months. (the agency has raised $486 million thus far.)
the agency, based in 2014, has developed the complete ecosystem from the drones and logistics computer software to launch and touchdown system. It acquired its start delivering medical supplies reminiscent of blood and vaccines in Rwanda through its autonomous electrical drones. Zipline later expanded to Ghana and Nigeria, Japan and america. It additionally recently obtained FAA half a hundred thirty five approval for its prolonged-differ drone supply service in america.
the agency has additionally snagged pretty simply a few partnerships prior to now two years that indicators aspirations to increase inside and past healthcare. Zipline has partnerships with Toyota Group and UPS, it delivers medical gear and private defending gear for Novant well being in North Carolina and well being and wellness merchandise for Walmart.
In a weblog put up that accompanied the announcement, Ahuja seems significantly eager on Zipline’s vertical integration that permits it to ship massive scale at extreme ranges of automation and integration, and at low operational value.
“The workforce has additionally labored onerous to make sure its decision has an superb and seamless consumer expertise, and creates minimal environmental noise,” he mentioned inside the weblog put up. “Zipline is ensuing from this actuality in a novel place to be a extreme strain in fixing this drawback at scale. really, many executives inside the healthcare and e-commerce residence are starting to understand a methods-based mostly decision simply like the one provided by Zipline.”
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