Movers And Shakers Of The Week [11 -16 Dec]

We bring you the weekly dose of important movers and shakers of the week.

Softbank’s Lydia Jett Steps Down From Snapdeal Board

Lydia Jett, Investor – Consumer Internet and ecommerce at Softbank Vision Fund, has stepped down from the Snapdeal board. Taking her place on the board is Saurabh Jalan, an Investment Professional at Softbank Group US. The development comes nearly seven months after Lydia joined the Snapdeal board as an Additional Director on March 30, 2017.

An MBA graduate from Stanford University, Jett previously worked as an Investment Banking Analyst at J.P. Morgan and Principal Investment Area Associate at Goldman Sachs.

Saurabh Jalan, on the other hand, worked as an associate at Silver Lake Partners and AEA Investors, prior to joining Softbank in May 2015. He is an Economics graduate from the University of Pennsylvania and has a demonstrated history of working in Finance and General Management sectors.

Ola Appoints Viraj Chouhan As Its Chief Communication Officer

Cab aggregator Ola has appointed Viraj Chouhan as its Chief Communications Officer (CCO). Viraj, a corporate communications veteran, brings over 20 years of experience across global brands like MTS,  Coca-Cola, and Bharti Airtel. He was most recently, Executive Director of Corporate Communications at MTS India.

Viraj would be reporting to co-founder & CEO, Bhavish Aggarwal. Anand Subramanian, who was leading the Communications mandate thus far, will be moving into a new role within Ola.

Viraj started his career in Communications with Ogilvy＆ Mather Public Relations and went on to become the Executive Director, Corporate Communications at MTS India.

Prior to joining MTS, Viraj headed the brand public relations function within the Corporate Communications team of Coca-Cola India & South West Asia across multi-country business units (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh) for all the beverage brands. He is an MBA Graduate from Amity University.

Ramkumar Narayanan Joins Hotify AI As Investor And Board Member

Bengaluru-based startup Hotify AI has roped in Ramkumar (Ram) Narayanan a an investor and Member of Advisory Board. Ram Narayanan’s vast experience in product development, product management, and product marketing, will now help Hotify to further strengthen its AI-led innovations & scale up business to the next level.

Ram is a global leader focusing on data-driven, digital product innovation spanning consumer & enterprise markets. He was till recently the General Manager of eBay Product Development Center, India and global head of Monetisation Products responsible for generating the revenues for eBay.

Prior to joining eBay, Ramkumar Narayanan was the Vice President of Global Product Management in Yahoo! where he was accountable for leading Product Management, Product Marketing, and User Experience Design globally covering Search, Commerce, Advertising, Small Business and Emerging Markets.

He is an MBA graduate from The University of Michigan, before which he received his mechanical engineering degree from the same college.

Smartworks Ropes In Harsh Binani As Co-founder

Smartworks founder Neetish Sarda has roped in Harsh Binani as another co-founder of the company. In his new role at Smartworks, Harsh will work towards making Smartworks a new age futuristic shared workspaces in India.

Harsh comes to “Smartworks” having spent over five years at world’s premier management consulting firm, McKinsey & Co’s in their Chicago office. At McKinsey, he focused on growth strategy and operational topics across healthcare, infrastructure, and insurance.

He holds an MBA degree from Kellogg School of Management, USA and a graduate degree in Economics from Shri Ram College of Commerce.

Stay tuned for the next week’s edition of Movers And Shakers Of The Week!

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