Online real estate portal Housing.com’s co-founder Advitiya Sharma has quit the company, reports VCCircle. According to the report, Sharma plans to startup but has not decided on anything as of now. He was also a board member of the company, looking after investor and external relations. You can read the content of Sharma’s farewell letter at YourStory.
Prior to Housing, Sharma worked at AT Kearney for 7 months as a business analyst. Housing was founded by 12 people including Sharma and Rahul Yadav, who was let go as CEO of the company in July last year. Yadav later launched a new startup which went on to get funds from Flipkart’s founders Sachin and Binny Bansal in December 2015.
Yadav’s exit and timeline of events
In April, Yadav wrote a ‘scornful’ resignation letter on the to board members and investors, criticising their intellectual capabilities and giving them a one week deadline to ‘help the transition’. The investors responded the next day with an acknowledgement of the resignation through the law firm Morrison & Foerster. The following day, he withdrew his resignation and apologized for his ‘unacceptable comments about the board members’. A detailed timeline of events leading to his exit can be found here.
Funding
In January, the company raised Rs 100 crore from Softbank, its largest investor to drive its new strategy and growth plans. In a statement, Housing CEO Jason Kothari said, “We are now well-capitalized to aggressively execute on our focused strategy and growth plans and believe 2016 will be a great year for the company.” Prior to this investment, Housing had raised $139.5 million in total from four rounds of funding.
Recent hires and appointments at Housing:
– In the same month, it appointed co-founder Snehil Buxy as its chief product officer. In his new role, Buxy would be responsible for new products and solutions. Prior to this, he led the front-end team and product development at the company.
– Housing appointed Jason Kothari as its new CEO in November. Following the tumultuous exit of the company’s co-founder and CEO Rahul Yadav, the company was run by an executive committee that controlled its finances and operations.
– In November, Housing appointed Nikhil Rungta as its chief marketing officer.
– In October, it appointed Nandini Mehta as general counsel where she would be responsible for defining the company’s legal framework.
– The same month, it also appointed Mani Rangarajan as its chief financial officer. Rangarajan would be responsible for financial strategy and planning.
Layoffs at Housing: In November, Housing laid off employees and said it would restructure its operations to focus more on the home-buying segment. In August, Housing confirmed that it had let go of 160 employees but MediaNama had received an anonymous tip-off that the number of staff cuts could be as high as 1,100, almost half of its workforce, and most of the people who would be affected would be the company’s ground and operational staff.
Our Housing coverage.
