Rahul Yadav: The bad boy of Indian startup might have lost interest in business

Rahul Yadav has been kicked out of realty portal Housing.com. This is the end of the story. But the story that began with an ambitious youngster (read IIT dropout) founding a company that would make the established rivals sweat in competition and gradually attaining the status of corporate drama prince is something that needs serious analysis.

The Economic Times in a news has asked ‘Had Rahul Yadav lost interest in Housing?’

Fond of controversy, Rahul may have lost actual interest in the business. "The guy is good. But he doesn't have the interests of his own company in mind, as he has now said that it is not interesting for him to solve the housing problem,” a venture capital investor told the ET.

Even until a day earlier, Yadav was denying reports of his ouster or that online classifieds company Quikr was in talks to acquire Housing.

The ET report further elaborates, Yadav has been openly contemptuous of rival organisations and people he perceives to have crossed his path. Things began to go haywire for him in March when he wrote an incendiary email to Sequoia India managing director Shailendra Singh, ostensibly because the venture capital firm poached an employee from Housing.

Then came the most trolling phase in the life of Rahul. He resigned as CEO, questioning "intellectual capability” of the board members and investors. At a board meeting a few days later, he apologized and withdrew his resignation, but the stage had been sfor an unceremonious exit from the company he cofounded three years ago.


According to the ET news report, Yadav announced a few days later in May that he was giving away his entire 4.57% stake to Housing employees, and challenged the founders of Ola and Zomato to follow suit. The following month, while returning from a trip to China, Yadav posted a photograph of Vishal Sikka sleeping at an airport lounge, complaining that the Infosys CEO had refused to answer his questions.

Born to middle-class parents from Alwar in Rajasthan, Yadav's turning point came when he enrolled at IIT-Bombay in 2007, specialising in metallurgy. It was at the institute, a breeding ground for tech entrepreneurs - the founders of India's largest cab aggregator, Ola, are IIT-Bombay alumni - that Yadav caught the entrepreneurship bug.

Having built Exambaba.com, an online question bank of old exam papers that IIT-Bombay asked to close, he dropped out of the institute in the final year. In 2012, he and 11 other batchmates cofounded Housing after they had a difficult time finding accommodation in Mumbai, home to some of the world's most expensive real estate.

Yadav's ignonimous exit puts a lot of things in question. With the influx of capital, Housing has aggressively expanded and now employs more than 2,500 people, whose are now in a precarious place with investors keen to sell the company.

But Yadav isn't without his share of supporters, people won over primarily because of his bold attitude. "... Please know that we are ardent admirers, and know that you are meant for greatness. Looking forward to hearing your next," Ajeet Khurana, the former CEO of IIT-Bombay's incubator, commented on Yadav's Facebook wall after he was fired, also stating that he was willing to invest in his next venture.

Yadav had grand visions for Housing, which he outlined to ET after returning from his trip to China. This included going beyond Housing being a classifieds website for real estate and evolving into an ecosystem with an online community and helping design the "next generation of houses,” reads the news report by the financial daily.

(Image: India Times)