Around the 26th of November (2014), employees at Homeshop18's Bangalore office, where its ecommerce division operated from, were given an option to join Reliance Retail. This was almost a month after Homeshop18 withdrew its $75 million IPO, for which it had filed on April 3rd (2014). "It was a Wednesday," one employee who left subsequently, told us, "and we were given till the end of the week to decide." This was expected, and some senior employees, on condition of anonymity, told us that most of them had been in the market for months, securing backup options. Late last year, Narasimha Jayakumar, COO & Business Head, ecommerce at HomeShop18 left to join Info Edge owned real estate portal 99Acres as its Chief Business Officer. Jayakumar, who had joined the company from Google five years ago, had set up its entire ecommerce division in Bangalore. MaheshTiyyagura, AVP at HomeShop18, has joined Aditya Birla ecommerce as its CTO. Vikram Dasu, from what we've heard, has joined D Mart to head Ecommerce, though Dasu hasn't responded to our query. Sukanta Das, AVP (Operations) told us he has also joined Aditya Birla ecommerce as its COO. Lijo Isac (DGM, Product Management and Digital Marketing) has joined Practo as AVP (Digital Marketing and Consumer Products). Piyush Bhargav, (VP-Product Management and Digital Marketing) is one of the few senior ecommerce executives to have switched to Reliance Retail. In June 2014, Reliance Retail had announced plans to enter ecommerce. Many others, around 100-125 of them, we're told, shifted to Reliance Retail. At its peak, a senior (former) Homeshop18 executive told…
