Nishar quits LinkedIn to join Auction

Will step down from his full-time role in October but will continue to be in an advisory capacity with the company

Deep Nishar, senior vice-president (products and user experience) at LinkedIn, has announced his exit from the company. He will be joining online real estate marketplace Auction.com in an advisory capacity.

Nishar, who was with LinkedIn for six years, said in a blog post that he would step down from LinkedIn from his full-time role in October, but would continue to serve the company in an advisory capacity.

Nishar, an Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, and Harvard Business School alumnus, had joined LinkedIn in 2009 from Google, where he was the senior director of products for the search giant.

Nishar is a significant part of LinkedIn’s growth story, which grew from 30 million subscriber base when he joined to 313 million members worldwide at present. LinkedIn’s annual revenue also grew from under $80 million to $1.5 billion in 2013.

On joining Auction.com’s board, Nishar said: “Auction.com is unique in allowing buyers, sellers and brokers to securely transact real estate online.

Translating the benefits of this open, interactive marketplace that provides price discovery, transparency, speed and efficiency to a wider population and providing them with the freedom to confidently transact real estate with ease from wherever they are, can only help Auction.com position itself as the leader of this segment for years to come.”

Since its inception in 2007, Auction.com has sold $26 billion in residential and commercial real estate assets. It has about 900 employees and headquarters in Irvine and Silicon Valley with offices in Austin, Plano, Texas, Atlanta, Denver, and Miami.

Nishar is also on board of internet firms TripAdvisor and Opower. He is an investor in multiple Silicon Valley start-ups including Spool (acquired by Facebook in 2012), Adku (acquired by Groupon in 2012) and Aardvark (acquired by Google in 2010). Prior to his work at LinkedIn and Google, Nishar had founded and served as vice-president of products at Patkai Networks.