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Rahul Yadav has been a busy man over the past few weeks, making news by going overboard with social networking and e-mail missives.
Now, however, friends and colleagues want the 26-year-old chief executive officer (CEO) of Housing.com to concentrate more on work than this publicity. Quite a few have communicated to him their concerns.
Now, however, friends and colleagues want the 26-year-old chief executive officer (CEO) of Housing.com to concentrate more on work than this publicity. Quite a few have communicated to him their concerns.
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“If the CEO indulges in such behaviour, how will people down the line concentrate on work? Employees have been busy reading papers and posts on Twitter and Facebook on Yadav,” said a person in the know at Housing.com. “We have to focus on our revenues, listings and expansion. With all this, there is no work being done. Even people in the organisation are saying the Facebook challenge was uncalled for.”
Last week, Yadav allotted all his personal shares, worth Rs 150-200 crore to the 2,251 employees of his company and challenged fellow Indian Institute of Technology alumni, Bhavish Aggarwal of Ola and Deepinder Goyal of Zomato, to disburse at least half their shares in their own companies to employees. Goyal responded by calling Yadav the “Arvind Kejriwal of start-ups”.
“There is fear in the mind of everyone. Yadav has shown inclination and we won’t be surprised if he quits tomorrow. Investors are genuinely concerned. If he quits, it might be difficult to attract talent with the bad publicity we have been attracting,” added another source.
Employees at Housing say if Yadav’s gesture to give away his stake was pure charity, why did he have to advertise it? “When you do charity, you do not put others (Zomato & Ola) in a spot. He is trivialising the whole act of charity. And, what charity are we talking about? Housing pays its employees handsomely,” said a company source.
It is believed that investors in the company got Yadav an image consultant, Pitchfork Partners, but this had failed to work. Former MSL Group India heads, Jaideep Shergill and Sunil Gautam, launched Pitchfork, a strategic consulting firm, this January.
“I have known Rahul since our IIT- Bombay days. He has always had his head firmly placed on his shoulders. But we are all perplexed with the way he is behaving these days. We just hope he concentrates more on his company than these antics,” said a friend.
Investors and employees are also concerned that if Yadav decides to walk away from Housing.com (giving up his stake in the company makes way for it), some needed staff might leave with him.
“Legally, there is nothing wrong with Yadav giving away shares. But, the board (of directors) should have been informed. The board is now apprehensive of his behaviour. They have asked Yadav to explain. This makes the investors doubt him,” said one of the investors in Housing.com.
In the past fortnight, Yadav has been making headlines. On April 30, after questioning the intellectual abilities of the company’s investors in an e-mail, Yadav resigned, only to apologise and withdraw his resignation five days later. Prior to that he had entered into a public spat with Sequoia Capital’s Shailendra Singh and Times Group.
