Matchmaking website Shaadi.com’s founder and CEO Anupam Mittal has stepped down from his role as CEO to focus on corporate development, acquisitions and international expansion, reports ET. COO Gourav Rakshit will take over as the CEO of Shaadi, as well as manage day to day responsibilities.
The company has also appointed Aditya Save as its chief marketing officer. It has also hired Ketan Doshi as its chief technology officer. Doshi, along with Save, will report to Mittal.
Mittal has been the owner of People Group which runs Shaadi, Makaan and Mobango for over 18 years. He worked as a product manager at MicroStrategy for 4 years before creating the People Group. In October last year, we’d reported that Mittal was an active angel investor and had made over 40 investments (in personal capacity) including Zapstitch, IndiaCollegeSearch and Ola among others.
Save replaces Abhishek Maloo, who will work with Mittal in the corporate development team. Interestingly, Save’s LinkedIn profile states that he’s been with the People Group as its CMO since February this year. Save previously worked with Marico as its digital marketing and media head for India and global CoE for 1.5 years, and as the digital marketing and media head at the same company for 1.5 years.
Save was on the board of advisors of DMTI for over 2 years. Prior to that, he was also a member of the Mobile Marketing Association’s India Council. Save worked as a senior manager of marketing of consumer and goods at GlaxoSmithKline for 2 years, before which he led the media and PR for HJ Heinz for almost 2 years. He has also worked as an investment manager at MindShare for over 4 years.
Before joining Shaadi, Doshi worked as the director of development at BMC Software for almost 3 years. He also worked as the India head and director of engineering at AmberPoint for over 5 years, before which he was a senior product development manager at Epiphany for 2.5 years. Doshi worked as the product development manager at Zaplet for about a year, as a consultant at IT Masters for almost 3 years, a software engineer at Remedy for over 5 years and in the same position at Oracle for 3 years.
People Group’s recent developments:
– In April this year, online real estate services portal PropTiger acquired real estate classifieds portal Makaan.com for an undisclosed sum, though Makaan.com would continue operating as an independent entity. Following the deal, Makaan’s CEO Aditya Verma would be reporting to PropTiger co-founder & CEO Dhruv Agarwala.
– In January this year, People Group acquired a 25% stake in dating app Thrill for Rs 6 crore in a cash and stock deal and as a part of the deal People Group’s dating website Fropper.com was merged with Thrill.
– Last year in October, People Group had mentioned that it was looking to invest between $25,000 to $2 million in early stage media-related startups and peer-to-peer networks. In the same month, it had participated in the education activity kits maker Flinto’s $300,000 investment round.
