Every idea is not meant to be successful in long run but what matters is your intention and focus. The story of the founder of Housing.com, Rahul Yadav speaks the same. Like most of the youngsters who belong to a middle class family, Yadav too had a target to settle down with a decent college and then a good job. But life had different plans for Yadav and this is why even after joining IIT Bombay in the year 2007 he could not fit in there.
Love for Programming
Although Yadav enrolled himself to study metallurgy but he figured out that this department was not his final destination. He carried on with his thirst for the right place unless he found the well of computers and programming to quench it. While in college he built an online question bank with the name Exambaba.com, for the students of engineering which provided them with the old question papers of IIT Bombay. His interest towards computers led him to drop his college and enter into the world of entrepreneurship. Life changing ideas always involve sincere effort, risk and out of the box thinking and Rahul Yadav was all game for it.
Foundation of Housing.com
The biggest problem faced by anyone coming to a metropolitan city is of finding a proper accommodation. Rahul Yadav after coming to Bombay dealt with the same issue and this left a deep imprint on his mind. Therefore, after dropping out from college to start a venture the first and foremost thought that came to his mind was of creating an online market from where people can easily look out for houses to rent or buy. This startup was founded by Yadav with 11 of his classmates and was launched in 2012 with Yadav holding the responsibility of CEO of the company. The company started off well and acquired much attention both from the investors and the public. Many renowned and well-known investors like Haresh Chawla, Nexus Venture Partners, Softbank Cpital and Qualcomm Ventures came forward to invest in the company. Housing.com amassed the funding more than $150 million in the year 2014 and set itself as one of the established firm in the market.
Falling off the position
The first 2 years of the company turned out to be splendid ones with a good amount of funding as well as popularity among the mass. With the great success of the company more and more members began adding up to maintain the pace of company’s progress. Everything seemed to be at its place and it seemed as if the graph of their success would continue to grow. But the wheel of time never waits for anyone to turn its direction.
Right from the beginning of 2015 things turned out to grow worse in the business and within no time the company’s graph faced a steep downfall. It is believed that this was the outcome of Yadav’s rash and impulsive actions. His indulgence in controversies seemed to be more than his focus on the business. He was very vocal against his competitors than taking his own company and plans forward. And as a result of his consistent involvement in controversies he was fired from the company in June 2015.
Rahul Yadav came into the spotlight for a number of controversial statements he made against his competitors including the founder of Zomato, the CEO of Infosys and the founder of Ola. Also his bold announcement of distributing his company shares worth $30 million among the employees created a tumult in the business world. He also sent some controversial mails to the company’s investors which resulted in further soaring his relationship with the board.
With all these controversies, the board of directors of the Housing.com made a unanimous decision of firing Rahul Yadav for he was too straightforward to do the business.
His New Venture: The return of Rahul Yadav
Yadav was never among those who would be thrashed by a failure or a defeat. He had much experience in standing again on his legs even after falling down 100 times. In about 2 and half months, Yadav again made a sensational entry in the market with his new venture, Intelligent Interfaces in September 2015. This start-up is all about data analysis and visualization in e-commerce. The company reportedly was said to have acquired funding from Paytm, YouWeCan, Flipkart and Micromax. However, so far there is no news of of his new venture except rumors of its failure and shutting down in months. It seems that Industry has to wait for “the return of Rahul Yadav”.
Aanchal is a freelance writer and has been writing since 2013. She is currently pursuing her masters in English Literature from University of Delhi and received her B.A. (hons.) degree in English Literature from University of Delhi.
She has a great passion for writing poetry. She is also a keen reader of inspirational stories of people who have achieved success through hard work.