Housing.com in trouble as high level exits continue

These exits comes a month after another co-founder Advitiya Sharma left the company to start a new venture

Churn at SoftBank-backed Housing.com continues: co-founders Abhishek Anand, Ravish Naresh and Sanat Ghosh quit the company two weeks back to start a new venture, reports Mint. Housing has confirmed this departure to the publication.

These exits comes a month after another co-founder Advitiya Sharma left the company to start a new venture and ten months after the online property classified's board fired co-founder and former chief executive Rahul Yadav.

Of the nine co-founders, seven co-founders have now left the company. two others hold top management positions - Snehil Buxy is chief product officer; and Amrit Raj is head of digital marketing. None of the founders however hold a board position.

Anand was Housing's chief technology officer while Naresh was the serving as chief executive officer of IREF, which Housing acquired last year. Ghosh was working as the associate vice president (product).

"Housing.com was our dream, and we are glad to see that the current Housing.com leadership team is strong, with very accomplished executives working alongside a young innovative team. We are confident that the positive momentum and high-growth at Housing.com will continue as we move on to our next dream, a new venture," three co-founders said in an email to the publication.

After a tumultous period last year, Mumbai-based Housing has revamped its core management team and increased focus on revenue-generation and building an advertisement business.

It promoted Jason Kothari as chief executive officer in November 2015 and has made numerous additions to its senior management team, including Mani Rangarajan as chief financial officer; Nikhil Rungta as chief marketing officer; Nandini Mehta as general counsel; and Abhishek Hota as chief of staff.

In the same month, Housing said it would focus on its home buying and selling business and scale down its listings and rentals, commercial properties, short stays and land businesses.

As part of this restructure, Housing had laid off several employees to reduce its employee base. While the company hadn't disclosed any specific details on how many people were laid off, ET had reported on November 5 that the real estate portal is laying off 200 employees to meet tightened cost targets set by its shareholders. The move came three months after it fired 600 employees to step up focus on its core technology and product.

SoftBank is the largest shareholder in the company and had recently invested an additional Rs 100 crore into the firm. The Japanese conglomerate has invested an overall $70 million into Housing as of now and the company has received more than $120 million in funding across multiple rounds.

Housing competes with 99Acres, Times Internet's* MagicBricks and Quikr-owned CommonFloor.

Source: techgig.com