Housing’s interim CEO Rishabh Gupta
A week after firing Rahul Yadav, India’s realty portal Housing has appointed COO Rishabh Gupta as interim CEO.
Housing’s board of directors unanimously agreed to bring Yadav’s tenure to a close because it found “his behavior is not befitting of a CEO and is detrimental to the company.”
“We believe and expect that [Gupta’s] principled leadership, tenacity, and determination will position us well,” Jonathan Bullock of SoftBank, a Housing investor, said in the email to Housing employees yesterday.
Over the last few months, Bullock and a representative from another Housing investor Falcon Edge overlooked all major decisions at the company. SoftBank has a 32 percent stake in Housing, Nexus Venture owns about 19 percent stake, and Helion Ventures and Falcon Edge about 10 percent each. The founders are together said to own less than 10 percent.
Housing, which has raised US$120 million to date, was founded in 2012 by a dozen students of the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai. Many of the group (including Yadav) dropped out to focus on building the company. Like the founders, Gupta is also a graduate from IIT-Mumbai.
Prior to joining Housing about two years ago, Gupta was a manager at ecommerce giant Flipkart, where he built the personal and healthcare portfolio.
The company is in talks to be acquired by Quikr for US$120 million at a valuation of US$172 million. That’s a decline from a US$235 million valuation during its last round of funding.
Editing by J. T. Quigley
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