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TIMES BUSINESS* THE TIMES OF INDIA, BENGALURU | THURSDAY, JULY 2, 2015
DEEP NISHAR, FORMER EXECUTIVE OF LINKEDIN,JOINS SOFTBANK AS A MANAGING DIRECTOR
RAHUL AGARWAL (R) SUCCEEDS AMAR BABU ASMD OF LENOVO’S INDIA OPERATIONS
Mumbai/New Delhi: Inwhat could be a first for theburgeoning e-commerceeconomy, the board of Hou-sing.com, a real estate listingsite, has sacked its CEO andco-founder Rahul Yadav formisconduct, marking the endof a rocky three-year-old rela-tionship at one of India’s hot-test startups.
At a board meeting thatwas hastily organized onWednesday morning, the com-pany decided to end Yadav’stenure due to his “behaviourtowards investors, media andthe ecosystem”, which was“not befitting of a CEO”. Ya-dav, one of the co-founders anduntil now the face of Housing-.com, will not be associatedwith the company in any man-ner and was asked to leave theoffice premises immediatelyafter the meeting.
“His conduct was harmingthe brand. A responsible CEOdoes not behave like the wayRahul did and that too despitebeing told a number of times,”
said a senior executive withone of Housing.com’s largestinvestors. The board met onWednesday morning after Ya-dav appeared before themedia on Tuesday and gaveconflicting statements, ac-cording to a senior Housing-.com employee privy to theproceedings. The startup thathas so far received $120 mil-lion in funding, has a clutch ofbig investors, including Soft-
bank, Qualcomm Venturesand Helion.
The decision highlightsinvestors increasing use ofpower to dismiss companypromoters, a common prac-tice globally. In developedcountries, shareholders exer-cise their rights to oust CEOsfor non-performance and im-proper behaviour. In the re-cent past, the board of theNasdaq-listed iGate had
sacked CEO Phaneesh Mur-thy over sexual misconduct.
Until recruitment firmSpencer Stuart finds Yadav’sreplacement, the current se-nior executives along withthe board will manage the re-al estate portal’s operations.Housing.com, which was setup by Yadav, an IIT-Bombaydropout, along with a dozen
of his friends, is valued at Rs1,500 crore. The firm hasaround 3,000 employees innearly 100 cities.
The mood at Housing-.com’s Powai offices in Mum-bai’s central suburbs was,however, normal as the newsof Yadav’s sacking didn’t sur-prise many of its employees,who were aware of his maver-ick ways. “I am not particu-larly unhappy with theboard’s decision. He didn’tknow how to behave evenwith his employees,” a Hou-sing.com employee told TOI.
The board’s move comesamid reports about onlineclassified portal Quickr is
looking to snap up Housing-.com and Yadav’s mediapranks on the subject. Hoursafter he was asked to leave, Ya-dav, in his customary sarcas-tic manner, reacted on hisFacebook account: “[In a nut-shell] Board: CEO title of Hou-sing.com. Take that away thenwhat are you? Me: A GeniusBillionaire Philanthropist.”
Yadav enjoyed a tumultu-ous relationship with inves-tors for some time, having putin his papers earlier follow-ing a spat with the board. Inhis resignation letter, hecalled the board members“intellectually incapable”.The 26-year-old subsequentlywithdrew his resignationand apologized for his com-ments. The entrepreneurcourted several other contro-versies during his stint atHousing.com, earning himthe title of Arvind Kejriwal ofstartups. He also created a fu-rore when he gave up all hisshares to employees andasked other startup founders-—Deepinder Goyal of Zoma-to and Bhavish Aggarwal ofOla Cabs—to follow suit.
Board Says His Behaviour Towards Investors And Media Was Not AppropriateHousing.com fires CEO Rahul Yadav
Reeba Zachariah & John Sarkar TNN
March 6, ’15 | Rahul Yadav fires off an email (that later went viral) to Sequoia India partner Shailendra J Singh over alleged poaching of staff
March 12 | Writes internal email claiming rival MagicBricks, owned by Times Group arm Times Internet, is raising funds while ‘maligning’ Housing
Apr 30 | Sends resignation letter to board members and investors, saying they are not “intellectually capable enough” for any discussion
May 5 | Withdraws resignation
letter with an apology
May 13 | Gives up all his shares worth up to Rs 200cr to 2,251 employees of the realty portal
June | Remains in the news for controversial remarks, latest being over reports of Housing takeover by Quikr
July 1 | Removed as CEO
COSTLY ANTICS RAHUL YADAVIIT-Bombay (2007–2011)
CEO Housing | June 2012 to June 2015
�Rahul Yadav decoded, P 14
Mumbai/Chennai: Theboardroom tussle in one ofthe country’s leading diag-nostics chain MetropolisHealthcare is possibly end-ing with estranged co-pro-moter GSK Velu selling his37% stake to private equitygiant Carlyle Group for morethan Rs 900 crore, people di-rectly familiar with the mat-ter said.
Carlyle is in advanceddiscussions to clinch a dealin the next few weeks, its sec-ond deal in the healthcareservice industry after strik-ing a similar sized deal tobuy a minority stake in theNaresh Trehan-led MedantaMedcity Hospital. Invest-ment bank Veda CorporateAdvisors is working on thetransaction.
Metropolis competeswith SRL Diagnostics and DrLal PathLabs in the fastgrowing domestic diagnos-tics market. Metropolis —one of the earliest to unfurlambitions of becoming a na-tional chain some 15 yearsago — is today a multination-al chain with more than 125laboratories, tracking Rs600-crore revenue annually.The Sushil Shah family nowholds 63% stake after buyingout the 27% held by WarburgPincus earlier this year.
The simmering feud be-tween Shahs and Velu cameto the fore when the lattersaid he was kept in the darkabout the share purchasetransaction with Warburg,which had invested in thecompany five years ago. Butsources close to Shahs saidthat it was a well-known factthat Warburg had made itsintention known last Octo-ber and all the board mem-bers knew it. Sushil Shah’sdaughter Ameera Shah runsthe operations as chief exec-utive and managing director.
The deal-making is de-pendent on the two warringco-promoters settling is-sues, including discussionsover a no-compete, which theShahs are insisting that Velushould sign, the sources cit-ed earlier said. Both Veluand Shahs are expected towork out an amicable formu-
la on contentious issues inthe next few days.
When contacted, Velu de-clined to comment but insist-ed that he was keeping all op-tions open. Carlyle declinedto comment.
Carlyle has been workingon the deal for about a yearand had even eyed the stakeof Warburg Pincus. The dealtalks went slow after theShahs managed the supportof KKR & Co to buy backWarburg’s stake and raisetheir own. KKR, which ex-tended funding support tothe Shahs, does not hold a di-rect stake in MetropolisHealthcare.
Sources close to theShahs said they “were notlooking to buy out Velu’sstake at the moment. But ifhe is looking to sell his staketo any other investor, we arehappy to support it”.
Carlyle looks to endfeud with MetropolisPE Giant May Buy Stake Worth ̀̀ 900 Crore
Boby Kurian & Aparna Ramalingam TNN
Metropolis is a multinational diagnostics chain with more than 125 laboratories and generating an annual revenue of Rs 600cr
Co-promoter G S K Velu (above) owns 37%, while the Sushil Shah family holds 63% (Sushil’s daughter Ameera Shah is the co’s MD & CEO)
The current feud started with Velu claiming he was kept in the dark about the Shahs buying Warburg
Pincus’ 27% stake this year
While the latest deal depends on Velu and the Shahs making peace, sources say both are expected to work out a compromise
DEAL-MAKING FOR PEACE?
Kochi: Kerala-based jewel-lery retailer T S Kalyanara-man is the richest jeweller inIndia, says a report byWealth-X which published alist of rich Indian jewellers.
According to the report,Kalyanaraman, chairmanand managing director ofThrissur-based Kalyan Jew-ellers, has a personal networth US$1.3 billion. Two oth-er Kerala jewellers who havefound place in the list are M PAhammad of Malabar Gold &Diamond and B Govindan ofBhima Jewellers.
“We now have 83 stores ofwhich 13 are outside India,”said Kalyanaraman while re-acting to the report. He had en-tered the gold jewellery busi-ness in 1993 from clothes
retailing with an initial in-vestment of Rs 25 lakh. Ka-lyanaraman’s company nowemploys 8,500 people directly.
According to Wealth-X, thesecond richest Indian jewelleris Nirav Modi, with an esti-mated net worth of US$1.1 bil-lion. Modi, coming from a fam-ily of diamond merchants,first set up his own companyFirestar Diamonds in 1999,which later went on acquiring
Sandberg & Sikorski.M P Ahammad is the third
richest Indian jeweller, with anet worth of US$1 billion.Based in Kozhikode, Aham-mad ventured into the goldjewellery business with aninitial investment ofUS$70,000. He, along with oth-er partners, owns 136 jewel-lery stores in India and theMiddle East and employsmore than 7,000 people.
B Govindan, chairman ofBhima Jewellers’ southernregion, is the fourth richestIndian jeweller with a person-al net worth of US$ 620 mil-lion. His group has 40 storesacross India, employing 2500people. Bhima, which hasstarted its Middle East oper-ations with a store in the UAE,plans to open up to 10 stores inthe near future.
Other rich Indian jewell-ers in the list are Kiran Gems'Vallabhbhai S Patel (US$ 590million), Laxmi Diamond’sVasant Gajera (US$ 580 mil-lion), Dharmanandan Dia-monds’ Laljibhai Patel (US$480 million), Kiran Gems’ Ba-bubhai Lakhani (US$ 470 mil-lion), Kiran Gems’ Mavji BhaiPatel (US$ 410 million) and Ra-jesh Exports’ Rajesh Mehta(US$ 310 million).
Kalyanaraman richest desi jewellerTOP GLITERATTI
Name Co Net Worth ($)T S Kalayanaraman Kalyan Jewellers 1.3bn
Nirav Modi Firestar Diamonds 1.1bn
M P Ahammed Malabar Gold & Diamond
1bn
B Govindan Bhima Jewellers 620m
Vallabhbhai Patel Kiran Gems 590m
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
Bengaluru: Private equitymajor TA Associates is lead-ing a $500-million (Rs 3000crore) acquisition of AtriaConvergence Technologies(ACT), one of the country'sleading leading highspeedbroadband service provid-ers headquartered in Benga-luru. This is also one of thelargest private equity trans-actions in India this year.Last week, TOI first reportedthe deal.
TA will spend about $200million (Rs 1300 crore) whileits co investors through aMauritius entity called Ar-gan will bring in rest of themoney to buy a little over90% stake in ACT. Broad-
band and cable TV accessprovider Atria has 1 millionsubscribers in Karnataka,Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pra-desh and Telangana.
ACT is adding more than20,000 new subscribers everymonth, has a 25% share ofthe market in Bengaluru.
Globally, the US privateequity firm manages assetsworth $18 billion and has in-vestments in Indian compa-nies Micromax, BillDesk
and Dr Lal PathLabs, amongothers. “We believe that inthe coming years, India willsee a significant increase inwired broadband penetra-tion,” said Dhiraj Poddar, co-head of India at TA Associ-ates Advisory, who will joinACT’s Board of Directors atthe close of the investment.
“With a proven record ofexecution, an attractivebusiness model, and an expe-rienced and highly capable
management team, we ex-pect continued growth forACT,” he added.
According to the Tele-com Regulatory Authorityof India, of India’s 250 mil-lion households, only ap-proximately 15 million, or6%, have a wired broadbandconnection.
Argan Mauritius is an en-tity controlled by existing in-vestor India Value Fund Ad-visors (IVFA), but has moneylargely from its global spon-sors, including GIC of Singa-pore and Canadian PensionPlan Investment Board. IV-FA, which has been an inves-tor in the company for sevenyears, monetized its early in-vestments but still controlsACT along with co-investors.
US fund leads `̀300cr ACT buyout
Bengaluru: Ratan Tata,chairman emeritus of TataSons, has invested in taxi firmOla in his personal capacity.
He has previously investedin over tenfirms, includ-ing Snapdeal,Paytm, UrbanLadder, Car-Dekho, Xiaomiand Kaaryah.
Bhavish Aggarwal, CEOand cofounder, Ola, said Tata’sinvestment was “a huge endor-sement from one of the mostrespected business leaders ofour times and reflects Ola’scommitment towards the fu-ture of mobility in India.”
Ola , which competes in In-dia with Uber, has to dateraised about $675 million frominvestors that include Soft-Bank, DST Global, Tiger Glob-al, Steadview Capital, and Ac-cel Partners. In March itacquired rival TaxiForSurefor $200 million. Ola says itserves millions of customersin over a 100 cities across In-dia through 150,000 vehiclesregistered on its platform.
Ratan Tata onfunding spree,invests in Ola
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
London: UK’s food regulator has foundMaggi manufactured in India by Nestle safefor consumers.
The Food Standards Agency (FSA) said ina statement on Wednesday, “The FSA canconfirm that results from testing samples ofMaggi Noodles in the UK have all found thatlevels of lead in the product is well within EUpermissible levels and would not be a con-cern to consumers.”
“Following an incident in India, where a
sample of Maggi Noodles was reported tocontain high levels of lead, the FSA madethe decision to test a selection of MaggiNoodles as a precaution. The FSA has alsoasked Nestle to provide it with test resultsfrom its own samples. All showed levels oflead to be well within EU permissible lev-els,” it said.
The total number of samples taken fromNestle, local authorities and port authoritieswere around 900 in total, FSA added. AGENCIES
Maggi is safe, says UK food regulator
TA will spend about $200 million,while its co-investors, a Mauritiusentity named Argan, will bring in rest of the money to buy a little over 90% stake in ACT
Bengaluru: Danske Bank, aleading financial enterprisein Europe and one of the large-st banks in Denmark, has es-tablished an IT and supportservices centre in Bengaluru.
The centre, in collaboratedwith ITC Infotech, is thebank’s first service centre inAsia and will provide develop-ment and support for its bank-ing services.
Speaking at a press confer-ence on Wednesday, Jim Dit-more, COO of services and ITgroup, said, “We are verypleased to work with ITC.There is a need of critical deliv-ery of mobile services and welook to leverage it with this.”He also said the bank may lookto set up a banking representa-tive office in India in the future,to help serve customers better.
The bank has hiredaround 800 people for the Ben-galuru centre. The centre canaccommodate 1,200 peopleand more hiring will happenas demand for IT services in-creases. The company hasmostly hired those with MCAand engineering degrees. TheBengaluru centre will aim toprovide digital services andbetter software.
Danske Banksets up IT
unit in B’luruTIMES NEWS NETWORK
Bengaluru: Metro Cash &Carry, the German business-to-business wholesaler, has in-vested Rs 70 crore to establisha fourth outlet in Bengaluru,and the 18th in the country.
The new outlet is in Bin-nypet, and follows the ones in Yeshwanthpur, Kanakap-ura Road and Hosur Road.The Yeshwanthpur facility,established in 2003, is Metro’soldest in India. RajeevBakshi, MD of Metro Cash &Carry India, noted that Ben-galuru “welcomed us as acash-&-carry pioneer over adecade ago.”
Metro caters to the specificneeds of local business mar-kets. It says it creates around300 jobs for every outlet.
Metro invests`̀70cr on newB’luru outlet
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
New Delhi: Amazon islearnt to be in talks withChennai-based online fi-nancial marketplace BankBazaar to acquire a stakethat will help the Americane-commerce company sellfinancial products on itsplatform in India.
This comes close on theheels of its rival Snapdealacquiring RupeePower, adigital financial servicesplatform, for an undis-closed sum earlier thisyear. Buying Rupee Powerhas helped Snapdeal gain astrong foothold in the coun-try’s Rs 4,500 crore onlinefinancial services market.
“Amazon wants to bepresent in that space too.The company is looking ataround 5% stake in BankBazaar,” said a person fa-miliar with the develop-ment. However, TOI couldnot independently verifythe valuations of the likelydeal. Questionnairesemailed to Amazon Indiaand Bank Bazaar did notelicit any response.
Bank Bazaar, whichsells financial products onits website that include
credit cards, car loans,personal loans and educa-tion loans, was founded inChennai in 2008 by its CEOAdhil Shetty, who previ-ously managed DeloitteTouche Tomahatsu’s USEast alliances, ArjunShetty, an ex-Amazon ex-ecutive, and Rati Rajku-mar, who formerly worked
with Kraft. In January lastyear, the company raisedaround Rs 80 crore in afunding round led by Se-quoia Capital and its exist-ing investor Walden Inter-national.
In an earlier interac-tion with TOI, Shetty hadsaid that online loan appli-cations have been growingby around 90% comparedto 15% in offline. “For fi-nancial companies too,selling online is a better op-portunity because the com-missions are lower,” saidan executive with an onlinefinancial marketplace.
Amazon may buyBank Bazaar stake
American e-commmajor looks to sellChennai-basedfirm’s financialproducts on itsIndian platform
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
