DoorDash Hires Uber’s Top Financial Executive as CFO

(Bloomberg) -- Food delivery startup DoorDash Inc. named Prabir Adarkar as chief financial officer, poaching the most senior leader of Uber Technologies Inc.’s finance department.

DoorDash Chief Executive Officer Tony Xu said Adarkar’s prior experience helping companies go public as a vice president at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., and his time preparing Uber for its own initial public offering set for next year made him an appealing pick for the job. At Uber, Adarkar had “not just the on-demand experience but also having seen it through the hyper growth,” Xu said.

The departure is a loss for Uber. The ride-hailing company has been without a CFO for years and has seen frequent defections from the department. Adarkar’s previous boss, Uber’s acting CFO Gautam Gupta, left about a year ago for the real-estate startup OpenDoor Labs Inc. as the company searched for a permanent CFO. It has long been clear internally that Adarkar would not be promoted to CFO, despite the company’s struggles to recruit one. Uber said it now plans to divvy up his responsibilities until it hires someone to run finance.

“From improving financial controls to putting the company on a path to profitability, Prabir has done a terrific job as we start to prepare for an IPO,” Uber Chief Executive Officer Dara Khosrowshahi said in a statement. “I’m sad to see him go, but this is a fantastic opportunity for him and everyone at Uber wishes him the best of luck at DoorDash.”

DoorDash and Uber share a major investor. Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp. made big financial commitments to both companies this year. SoftBank, along with Sequoia Capital and Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC Pte, invested $535 million in March valuing DoorDash at $1.4 billion.

To contact the reporter on this story: Eric Newcomer in San Francisco at enewcomer@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Mark Milian at mmilian@bloomberg.net, Molly Schuetz

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