Two significant moves at Rediff.com: ContentSutra reports that Zaki Ansari, VP (Product Development) and CFO Joy Basu have resigned from the company. MediaNama contacted Ansari, who declined to confirm or deny the development, or comment on his next move. Contentsutra adds that after 14 years at Rediff, Ansari might be headed to Web18. However, Web18 CEO Surya Mantha, when contacted said that “Zaki is not joining Web18 at this point.” On Products and Content, Mantha said that the company has a team in place. Web18 recently announced a number of appointments.
We haven’t heard back yet from Rediff on either Ansari or Basu, and Rediff CEO Ajit Balakrishnan’s phone is currently unreachable.
The Emperor Needs New Clothes?
During a recent earnings conference call, we had asked Balakrishnan about the spate of senior and middle management moves from the company over the past year or so. Balakrishnan’s response:
All these individuals and more who have moved are characterised by the fact that they are well trained here, and they would have great value outside. We’ve not made any major replacement for any of those. We’re fine. So far as the structure is concerned, the key team has been around here for 10 years.
Ansari is believed to be one of that key team at Rediff, involved both with content and products over the years. Recently, he was involved with both Rediff Moneywiz as well as the aborted rollout of the opening up of the API at Rediff.
This follows a string of middle and senior management moves from Rediff.com over the past year and a half, with Chief Media Revenue Officer Arvindra Kanwal, VP (Marketing) Manish Agarwal (now CEO, UTV New Media), VP (Product Marketing) Jasmeet Singh Gandhi (now with Nokia), Sr. VP (Product) Uday Sodhi (now CEO, New Media at Balaji Telefilms), VP (Finance) Debabrata Saha, VP (Strategic Alliances) Preeti Desai all having moved on.
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6 Comments until now.
Rediff is struggling with their new redesign (which sucks big time) and with the fact that they do not have a monetization strategy for their video platform iShare.
iShare is going to bring them down unless they realize that they just cannot compete with Youtube as far as UGC is concerned. Also, Rediff is sure to face lawsuits for copyright infringement on their iShare platform for some of the UGC videos.
While there have been 8 departures, including the recent two, at the VP level and above in the last year and a half alone, the situation was not so great earlier too. There have been about 30 people at the functional head (VP & above) level who left or were eased out over the last 10 years. A dipstick survey will reveal the same common thread (reasons) for these departures. Rediff.com's management team is now non-existent and as or more depleted as the site's home page itself .
I dont see a reason as to why rediff needs 30 VP&above roles.
Their only source of revenue in India is through AD Sales and why the hell do they need so many VPs to build products that doesn't generate any damn revenue.
I think, good times are ahead for this company !
Hi Career Aaj aur Kal : No,at a time Rediff did not have 30 VPs/heads,they typically have had max 10 or so,they have not been top-heavy,on the contrary.It’s just that the current departing CFO is the 4th the company has had, they are onto their 3rd Ad Sales head,the loss of VP Products Zaki and of previous incumbent Jasmeet last year have been key,as both were founding members and headed a key portfolio,there has been churn in most functions,etc.A company of 250-300 odd people has had a total of 30 departures at the senior levels alone and there has been similar talent depletion at other levels too.
latest news update. Zaki joins UTV new media…..as CTO!
manish aggarwal ceo and zaki cto…what else can you ask for.
Manish and Zaki are a good team. UTV has got the cream of Rediff