Abhishek Anand, Ravish Naresh and Sanat Ghosh, co-founders of Mumbai-based real estate portal Housing.com, owned and operated by Locon Solutions Pvt. Ltd, quit the company two weeks ago to start their own venture.
The company confirmed this in an email. The news comes a month after another co-founder Advitiya Sharma left Housing.
The four co-founders have left within a year of co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO) Rahul Yadav being asked to leave by the board in July 2015.
“Abhishek, Ravish and Sanat played an important role in building the foundation of Housing.com. They are moving out to pursue their new dream of starting another new venture. I sincerely thank them for their contributions and wish them the very best. I am sure what they undertake next will be as exciting as Housing,” current CEO Jason Kothari said in an email.
Under the leadership of Kothari, who was appointed chief executive in November last year, the focus of the company has been to build revenue. Housing.com started out as a listings portal, but has changed its model to allow users to buy and sell homes.
The change in model has been accompanied by a change in senior management. Chief financial officer Mani Rangarajan, chief marketing officer Nikhil Rungta and general counsel Nandini Mehta are all relatively new.
Acknowledging the changes, and in a sign of faith, Japan’s SoftBank Corp., the main investor in Housing.com, pumped in an additional Rs.100 crore into the company.
Mint reported this month that Housing.com might look to raise another round of funding by the end of the year.
The last round raised by the company was of $90 million in 2014, led by SoftBank.
Housing has said it is also is looking to make acquisitions to stimulate growth.
Anand, Naresh and Ghosh held senior positions in the firm. Anand was chief technology officer, Naresh was chief executive officer of IREF (Indian Real Estate Forum), which was acquired by Housing.com last year, and Ghosh was assistant 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,” the three said in an email.
Housing was founded by 12 Indian Institute of Technology Bombay students in 2012. Four left by 2014.
With the exit of five co-founders since July 2015, Housing.com now has only three of its original co-founders—Snehil Buxy, chief product officer; Jaspreet Saluja, head, data operations; and Amrit Raj, head of digital marketing.
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