Often known as the horrific boy of the Indian begin-up international – Rahul Yadav is the ex-founder and the former CEO of the Rs. 1500 crores Housing.Com.
Rahul born to a center-magnificence own family from Rajasthan is an IIT (Bombay) very last year dropout. He had enrolled on the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay in 2007 to concentrate on metallurgy. He additionally went on to function the consultant and secretary for the university’s pupil association as well.
Later, he had additionally long past on to construct Exambaba.Com, which became an online query bank of old examination papers, but finally he was asked to close the web site but the group.
He is one person that has taken the complete of Indian start-up environment for a roller-coaster ride and has controlled to provide a few much desired mild to the darkish side of the environment.
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Anyways, Rahul turned into the fave baby of controversies. He became always in a fight with the Dean or the Teachers at the IIT for some reason or the opposite. But this additionally the vicinity wherein the concept of housing.Com had first erupted!
Let’s inform you his tale!
THE RISE…
Now all and sundry likes a great tale and Rahul sure as hell has an thrilling one for you. His tale might also in some unspecified time in the future remind you of Steve Jobs as well.
How Did The Idea Erupt?
So this is how he went on inscribe his name in the records books of start-united states of americaforever!
A organization of boys along with Rahul Yadav, CEO, Housing.Com & Advitiya Sharma, CMO & Co-Founder of Housing.Com had came all the way down to Mumbai for further research at IIT-B, and determined it literally impossible to find accommodation.
They had to spend a month on the roads of Mumbai searching for a first rate accommodation however failed! Finally, after a long and tiring seek they found a house near the IIT-B campus, Powai.
Since they'd a terrific community of potential clients amongst their IIT pals and batch buddies, they grow to be agents and had been making Rs.1-2 lakhs / month inside a quick time period.
They now felt that it turned into now time for countrywide growth, but due to the fact they lacked large nearby expertise of various cities and states, they felt held again.
This problem was became an possibility by those boys after they determined to build a internet site for the equal.
And due to the fact none of them were formally coders except for Rahul (who had learnt coding throughout the manner of building Exambaba.Com), he designed and constructed a well-deliberate map-based portal and known as it – “Housing.Co.In”.
The portal become made open for public in June 2012!
TRIVIA: - According to Forbes India, Housing.Co.In had bought $8 Million really worth of real estate in their first week.
How Did They Grow?
Hence, after the birth of the organisation and after seeing its sudden growth, all different founders left their consulting and software program jobs and joined-in full time.
Soon the corporation additionally controlled to raise two rounds of investment of Rs.1.5 crores (from Haresh Chawla – former CEO, Network18) and Rs.50 Lakhs (from Zishaan Hayath – Co-founder, Chaupaati Bazaar).
In the first 9 months, the company had a clean agenda in which the primary cognizance changed into mapping the markets of Mumbai, navigation capabilities and the area-based totally approach and fixing the search features.
Later, within the first few weeks after the release of the web site, their initial brokerage-based totally version turned into dropped and the listing-based totally version become decided on, as it turned into extra reliable.
Now with such big trends, it was clear that the organisation turned into making a killing. And although, it changed into pronounced that the portal had broke-even their operational value within the Mumbai marketplace inside the first nine months itself, however because of investor confidentiality clauses the employer couldn't officially reveal their sales information.
This changed into attained by their simple sales model, wherein they fee a 6-monthly subscription fee of ?five,000 or ?8,000 for an annual subscription from the brokers and sellers for top class offerings. After which, they are able to upload as many listings and inventories as feasible, with a circumstance that their in-residence group will move ahead and collect the information.
Unlike other competition, their in-house records series group visits each belongings web site uploaded at the portal, photos the indoors and outdoors of the house. They collect facts factors at the amenities, connectivity, neighbourhood and the area, along with distances from the closest bus stop, airport, faculties, and medical institution. This procedure is followed within the case of every list through a broker or a landlord as properly. A rate-heat map suggests how property prices have moved within the particular locality over time.
So basically, whilst a customer searched their internet site for a property, they could see 3-d fashions for each unmarried undertaking, along with a 360 degree view.
And certainly in a count number of a 12 months, the organisation handed its competitors – Makaan.Com and Indiaproperty.Com in phrases of attain percent, and additionally raised some other spherical of $2.5 million along with an unannounced spherical worth $three million from Nexus Venture Partners (suggested by nextbigwhat.Com).
These budget have been majorly utilized by the agency to create a (pretty required) Data Science Lab, and additionally to expand to cities like Chennai, Delhi, Noida and Ghaziabad, Hyderabad and Faridabad.
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By now the corporation had additionally improved their staffing to seven-hundred personnel (and hiring) and the site now was also clocking 1-lakh / day specific person base.
By the give up of the 9th month of 2013, the organisation sold the domain name “Housing.Com” along with a national range, “03-333-333-333”, for a whooping $1 million with intentions to target international users inside the close to future.
And by using the give up of this yr, on the advice of their Data Science Lab (DSL) the company also delivered Child Friendliness Index (CFI) to its platform measuring neighbourhoods in three exclusive criteria’s: 1) quantity of faculties in a place, 2) number of hospitals and parks in a place, and three) proximity of those facilities to the area. Additionally, they also released a new option for users to search for paying guest leases in towns.
The yr of 2014 saw the launch of the Demand-Supply Monitoring Tool, at the side of every other fundraiser of $19 million from Helion, Nexus and Qualcomm .
And whilst you have a look at the agency these days, with a sturdy crew of 2500 people (and expected to grow to over 4000) housing.Com is valued at ?1500 crores. The organisation in the intervening time gets extra than eleven million site visitors on the internet site / month, and has also crossed 1,000,000 app downloads as properly.
And speaking about their investment rounds, housing.Com has raised a complete of $139.Five Million in 4 Rounds from 6 Investors such as – SoftBank Capital, Helion Venture Partners, Qualcomm Ventures, and so forth
The Acquisitions made so far?
So a ways the employer has made five acquisitions, which encompass: -
- The actual estate discussion forum, (IREF) Indian Real Estate Forum ($1.2 Million)
- The danger assessment firm for realty projects, Realty BI ($2 Million)
- The cloud-based sales lifecycle management platform, HomeBuy360 ($2 million)
- The assets management software focused at condominium providers – BigBHK.Com
- The online network for agents – Plat
THE FALL…
Now to inform you approximately the fall in his life, we first ought to rewind lower back a bit.
The month changed into December of 2014. After jogging from every pillar to submit, Rahul had in the end controlled to persuade the Japanese, more precisely Softbank Capital to invest $90 million (Rs.572 crores) in Housing.Com.
Using those price range, the corporation went on a huge development spree. They began via mapping over forty million homes across 300 towns in India, then started large scale hiring of over 500 human beings from the IITs and other topflight engineering faculties, and also commenced spending closely on advertising and marketing campaigns.
Now around the equal time, Rahul had got pretty instigated by using the fact that, Shailendra Singh – Managing Director, Sequoia Capital (one among the biggest VC companies inside the international) had reportedly offered a activity to a Housing.Com worker.
And to counter this, Rahul wrote an e-mail to Shailendra threatening him that if they didn’t stop messing round with Housing, it would be their end.
While this became hot, Times Group additionally sent a criminal observe to Housing.Com in search of Rs.100 crores ($sixteen million) in damages from the organisation. This was because Rahul had once in an electronic mail to his personnel claimed that Times Group was trying to harm and harm Housing.Com.
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To add to all that, Rahul due to the fact that some time have been suppressing his frustration for the investors, who forcefully (in line with him) had been calling the shots inside the agency, and he had began to feel like a Namesake CEO.
His frustration with the investors reached its height and ultimately came out in 2015, whilst he in an electronic mail to the Board Members and Investors, Quit the organisation. The e mail that he sent had some heavy words used which absolutely showed the level of frustration he had with the traders.
But then an afternoon later, it was reported that Rahul had agreed to withdraw his resignation after having frank and healthful discussions at the board meeting. Furthermore, he also apologized for his unacceptable remarks about the board contributors as well.
Later inside the equal month, Rahul in a shocking news announced that he is gifting away his whole stake in Housing.Com to its employees, and the motive in his phrases was – “I’m just 26 and it’s too early in life to get extreme approximately money and so forth”. The shares had been estimated to be worth somewhere round Rs150 – Rs.2 hundred crores.
And this grew to become out to emerge as the remaining nail in the coffin!
In July 2015, it was introduced that, Rahul the co-founder and the CEO of housing.Com has been fired from the firm and could not be related to the agency in any manner.
But as a great deal as tough hitting and demotivating these chains of activities have been, they similarly were a blessing in conceal. Not most effective did they flip out to grow to be a watch opener to the darkish facet of the start-up global, but these also helped Rahul to learn how to benefit an objective factor of view of the complete situation, be extra strategic and diplomatic, and at the identical time research out of it and circulate on.
And with this started a new bankruptcy in his lifestyles!
THE COMEBACK…
Now despite a few many awful events taking place in a row, Rahul being the fighter did not feel disheartened, demotivated or brief of concept. He determined to stand again up with complete self assurance, and started arrangements for a brand new venture!
Learning his classes from his recent chain of occasions, and together with his deep information of era he decided to transport ahead and within the following few months or should we are saying lately; Rahul has announced to begin a new assignment within the field of Data Analytics and Visualisation.
Being records analytics willing, the brand new employer may be specializing in analysing massive facts to expect patron behaviour and provide speedy insights at key decision factors. It is likewise stated that, Rahul’s new undertaking is aimed at revolutionising using facts analytics and its reason.
Why Data Analytics?
Well, Rahul’s hobby in that style goes back to his tenure at Housing.Com. If you consider, Housing.Com had received a statistics analytics firm referred to as Realty Business Intelligence (BI). This was dome to get a deeper information of patron behaviour and to help him make higher decisions.
Although the call of the new employer is still kept below wraps, but he has additionally approached and acquired non-public investments from Vijay Shekhar Sharma (Founder of Paytm), Sachin Bansal (Co-founding father of Flipkart) and Rahul Sharma (Founder of Micromax) for his new venture. These price range are expected to be somewhere near $15 million.
More recently, he additionally had met the RIL Chairman and the richest man in India – Mukesh Ambani. Now even though, his final approval is yet to return and there is no respectable assertion however it seems that the honcho also appears to be interested in his new mission and there may be a excessive hazard that he will bet on this younger man.
On the other hand, Rahul even after this whole incident where he was portrayed as a villain (by means of the media and plenty of others), he isn't falling brief of hands. It isn't always simply the investors however his former body of workers members also are eager on his cutting-edge venture.
According to a record in Inc forty two, there has been a mass departure from Housing.Com to join Rahul’s organization. It become also suggested that Housing.Com were planning to sack six hundred of their personnel however it is visible that they may be voluntarily retiring to join Rahul’s new undertaking.
Additionally, many senior workforce which includes Pratik Seal (CMO and Finance), Azeem Zainulbhai (Chief of Staff), and Suvonil Chatterjee (Chief Design Officer) have already left Housing.Com to join him.
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And finally, there has been additionally a huge buzz these days that Rahul would be becoming a member of Bigg Boss’s modern day season (Indian version of Big Brother). Yes, it is actual that he was provided to enroll in, but preserving in thoughts his plans for the new assignment, he received’t be approaching board.
