Procurement Survey: Expert Insight from Zip's Rujul Zaparde

Procurement leaders and their functions face unprecedented complexity and challenges as a result of an increasingly uncertain world. But these challenges also bring opportunity. 

The Procurement Survey 2025, an extensive piece of research into the hearts and minds of the world’s most successful leaders in the profession, looks to understand this enterprise landscape in more detail. 

We worked closely with 642 global procurement executives to understand their pain points, successes and strategies. 

The result is a crucial body of work that provides expert insight into themes including technology transformation, the rapidly expanding role of AI, geopolitical disruption and the shifting expectations for Chief Procurement Officers on the frontline. 

To interpret the survey data and offer practical thought leadership on the key outcomes, we collaborated with some of the industry’s most prominent experts and companies, including Zip’s Rujul Zaparde. 

Zip is an innovative, AI-powered procurement orchestration platform that revolutionises how industry leaders purchase, operate and succeed. Rujul is at the helm, overseeing the company’s key functions and driving strategy. 

Here, we find out more about his and Zip’s work and delve deeper into his thoughts on the rapidly changing world of procurement. 

Empowering modern procurement

Rujul Zaparde has spent a lifetime pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in enterprise technology. 

A serial entrepreneur and forward-thinking operator, he is CEO and Co-Founder of Zip – the world’s leading procurement orchestration company – where he drives vision and go-to-market functions, strategy and execution.

Before founding Zip, Rujul was a product manager at Airbnb, where he led its Experiences product line. Earlier in his career, he founded FlightCar, a peer-to-peer car-sharing startup that was acquired by Mercedes-Benz.

Zip secured a landmark US$190m Series D funding round last year – the largest investment into procurement technology in over two decades. Its technology helps to empower procurement in an increasingly complex environment. 

Zip’s AI-powered orchestration platform revolutionises purchasing for leading names like Snowflake, Discover and Sephora, while a recent IDC report shows organisations save an average of US$14m using its solutions – Zip has saved global enterprises over US$4.4bn since it was founded four years ago. 

The company was the first to introduce Gen AI into procurement in 2023, having already delivered over four million actionable AI insights to names such as OpenAI, Coinbase and UCI Health. 

For risk management, Zip’s approach to vendor vetting significantly enhances cybersecurity, with structured workflows that help protect sensitive data and ensure compliance

The changing role of procurement teams

This experience gives Rujul crucial insight into the mechanics of modern procurement. 

“There’s a new generation in procurement thinking,” he reflects. “Previously, it was about aggressive negotiations and cost cutting, but today’s professionals emphasise supplier partnerships and stakeholder experience. 

“There’s a shared responsibility for procurement culture, where everyone protects the business from risk.”

This is critical against a backdrop of increasing complexity and disruption – key themes in The Procurement Survey 2025. 

“Since the pandemic we’ve seen an explosion in complexity, including supply chain issues, ESG concerns, tariffs, inflation, geopolitical disruption and global multipolarity,” says Rujul. 

“The CPO role is evolving rapidly, driven by external factors like geopolitical disruption, tariffs and global multipolarity, which are making supply chain diversification crucial. Procurement now protects the brand through sustainable supply chains while responding to increasing demands with fewer resources. Procurement teams are figuring out how to do much more with less.”

Embracing digital transformation

Rujul points to the combined labour and complexity challenge – enormous volatility but insufficient staff to handle it – as a pressing problem. 

And while digital transformation has moved beyond workflow automation to digitising entire processes and connecting disparate systems, effective AI adoption remains difficult.

“That’s particularly true for organisational readiness for AI transformation,” he says. 

“While the imperative to adopt is high, many teams remain stuck with legacy systems and staff unprepared for AI implementation. It’s a formidable challenge that’s both urgent and difficult.

“This is the moment for procurement to embrace truly intelligent orchestration, something we’re deeply focused on at Zip, with some very exciting innovations coming.”

Rujul sees ongoing innovation and the move to “the platform of the future” as key to procurement evolution.

“The main question is around how to shift from reactive to proactive,” he says. “This transition is central to procurement’s future value. 

“Success depends on embracing intelligent technology that automates routine tasks while enabling strategic focus . Through the Zip AI Lab, which we announced during our fundraise last year, we’re now developing powerful agentic capabilities that will fundamentally change how procurement teams operate.

Considering future development, Rujul points to two parallel tracks: advanced AI moving toward autonomous capabilities and global expansion addressing increasingly complex supply chains. 

“Organisations that transform procurement from a back-office function to a strategic advisor will gain significant competitive advantages,” he says. “To help shed light on what that looks like, our Head of Research, Nick Heinzmann, offers extensive insight on the result of the survey.”

To explore essential procurement insight and thought-leadership, read The Procurement Survey 2025 here.

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