Putting an end to speculation, online home search portal Housing.com’s co-founder and CEO Rahul Yadav was shown the door on Wednesday.
The realty portal’s board said the company had “released” the CEO with immediate effect, after a board meeting earlier in the day.
“Yadav, co-founder of the company, will no longer be an employee of Housing and be associated with the company in any manner going forward,” it stated, citing his behaviour towards investors, ecosystem and the media as the reason for his ouster.
The Board added that Yadav’s behaviour was not befitting of a CEO and was detrimental to the company, and that search for an interim CEO was underway. Till then, senior executives will run the operations.
Controversies Yadav, an IIT Bombay alumnus and dropout, was the brain behind Housing.com that received over $100 million from investors such Soft Bank, Helion Ventures, Nexus and Qualcomm Ventures, taking its valuation to about ₹1,500 crore.
Yadav made news in the last few months for his quirky statements, which included a letter to Sequoia India’s head Shailendra Singh, accusing him of poaching employees.
Post that, Yadav resigned on grounds that investors were not intellectually capable, but soon withdrew it.
This was followed by high drama, when Yadav gave away all his shares, worth ₹200 crore, to the employees. This was seen as a “marketing stunt” by several industry players, who also called Yadav “insane” and “immature”.
BusinessLine tried to contact Yadav for comments but he did not respond.
While it is not clear whether Yadav will make a comeback with a new venture, industry leaders say that in this era one can easily raise money to fund a consumer Internet start-up, but to sustain that, one needs to be grounded.
Other cases Veteran angel investor and serial entrepreneur Sanjay Mehta said, “Rahul may get investments but trust and respect is lost. These entrepreneurs are popular because they are looking at disrupting with new business models with technology, but at the end of the day people lose out on management skills.”
However, Yadav is not the first such founder to have been sacked by investors. Apple’s founder Steve Jobs was famously shown the door in 1985, following a dispute within the company.