Housing.com founder gives away all his stakes to employees

A week after withdrawing resignation, Housing.com Chief Executive Rahul Yadav Thursday in a surprise move decided to allot all his personal holding in the company worth Rs 150-200 crore to the employees.

"Rahul Yadav has decided to allot all his personal shares worth Rs 150-200 crore to the employees of Housing.com who number 2,251," the housing portal said in a late evening statement. The value of this stock is worth the employees' one-year salary, it added.

Yadav justified the move saying, he is "just 26 and it's too early in life to get serious about money etc." "Housing.com was started because of two reasons. The problems related to house hunting is unsolved globally. Across the globe there are over 500 players who aggregate the market data for buyers.

We want to unify all those and create a global platform for real estate," he said. Yadav had reportedly written a resignation letter on April 30 to the board and investors and questioning their "intellectual capability" and giving them a one-week deadline to "help in the transition". However, on May 5, he withdrew the resignation and apologised for his outbursts.

Housing.com, which is backed by Japan's Softbank, said its board has been reconstituted to include all main shareholder representatives.

Last December, it received USD 90 million funding, led by Japan's SoftBank, valuing the portal at about Rs 1,500 crore. It would use the funds to map over 40 million houses across 300 cities.

Its other shareholders include Nexus Venture Partners, Helion Venture Partners, Qualcomm Ventures, Nirvana Ventures and Falcon Edge Capital.