The Rahul Yadav Story | Hacker News Reader

The Rahul Yadav Story

foundingfuel.com

59 pointsankitoberoi11 comments

Rahul's is the story of the quintessential silicon valley startup founder, except he's in India and these stories are novelty.

When media contacted him if his company was acquired, he reportedly said yes to 50% of the journalists and no to 50% of the journalists "to have fun" - http://indianexpress.com/article/blogs/rahul-yadavs-latest-a...

This was apparently the last of a growing list of misdemeanors. So the board of directors asked him to step down.

can anyone outline what the backstory is? i feel like without knowing Rahul Yadav and what happened at Housing, this piece is hard to follow ...

12 guys started Housing.com in 2012. (4 of them had more control of the company if I'm not wrong). Rahul Yadav was the CEO till yesterday. Good team, they executed things quickly, got attention from investors, got handsome funding early on. Bought a domain name like Housing.com. But Rahul Yadav is very brashy too and publicly ridiculed the VCs several times on not taking decisions on his terms.

Softbank (Japan) had nearly 30% stakes in housing.com . Rahul had ~4.5%. Anyway the investors eventually had enough power to expel Rahul "with immediate effect" after yesterday's board meeting saying "The board believed that his behaviour is not befitting of a CEO and is detrimental to the company".

I'm still not sure whether to side with Rahul or the investors. But he does like the spotlight for sure, even if it comes as negative publicity. I don't entirely disregard his opinion or frank talks, but there's a certain professionalism he lacked viz. bringing boardroom talks to media frequently, trying to sensationalise how he talked brazenly to the VCs.

What has been the accomplishments of housing.com?

They have raised some 120 mn in 5 rounds of funding (the last one at 250 mn valuation). I haven't seen the traction yet, which is probably ok for a 3 yr old company. The product is good, but the market in India is still nascent.

The problem is that the only reason I hear about them is Rahul's antics.

Imagine "VCs brazenly talked to founders". Would that even be news? No. They do that constantly with impunity.

If there's any doubt, never side with the VCs.

This story reminds me of Boo.com during the dotcom boom. I wonder if india's startup culture is bubble and it is soon going to burst.

It is not a bubble. In fact, India's startup culture has emerged at the very right moment as more and more people are getting aware and connected to internet. And considering lack of technology companies in consumer sector except IT services firms, India's startups like FlipKart, Housing.com, etc have found the perfect timing to come up.

There is a newly available 150 Million middle-class with smartphones and Internet.

The huge market in each city (Bangalore alone has 1 Million IT folks, middle class is ~5 Million), the high density (10K/sqkm), high Internet penetration, make this a market comparable to the largest US cities. These cities now have critical mass to kickstart new product companies.

The daily friction of life is so high, that home delivery/ecommerce is changing the entire retail landscape including in food and groceries, and soon in services too.

Bangalore is on par with SF on food/grocery delivery, and perhaps ahead on services delivery (see home medical service startups like Portea.com).

Startups are not a bubble per se. We need more startups to smoothen out the rough edges of life in India.

However, late stage valuations may be in a bubble. In the early stage, valuations are moderate.

Quick question: If one were to look for such quantitative figures that you provided what would be a good way to find them.

Was from Wikipedia + Google + back-of-the-envelope.

Didn't find things in one place.

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