Movers And Shakers Of The Week [17 October – 22 October]

Ecommerce and payments platform Paytm has announced that Amit Singhal, former Head, Google Search has joined its Board of Directors. Singhal has worked with Google for 15 years as the organisation’s core team member. Post-retirement, he has focussed on philanthropic activities through the Singhal Foundation. He is also an active investor in companies.

In a recent post on Medium, Deepak Abbot wrote a goodbye mail to his team as he quits Smartapp. He joined the company around one and a half years back and has played a keen role in scaling it to over 2.5 million users. He had earlier associations with Ibibo Group, Times Internet, Paytm, Reliance Entertainment, Zappak and more.

Let’s look at some of the important movers and shakers of the week.

Ex-Bharti Group, Uber, Facebook Execs Have Joined Runnr Over The Last Few Months

Food ordering and delivery platform Runnr, has added senior talent to its team over the last few months, in order to strengthen core organisational capabilities. Senior executives with rich experience have joined Runnr from Bharti Group, Uber, Facebook, and Dazo.

Garima Gupta is CFO at Runnr. A chartered accountant, Garima has worked in several functional and leadership roles in finance. Most recently, she was the CFO of Nxtra Data Limited, Bharti’s data centre business. Prior to this, Garima was with Genpact.

Aadish Dhakad, an IIM alum, is currently heading Supply Operations at Runnr. He comes with a diverse experience in banking, power, and logistics. As the Operations Manager of Uber Pune, Aadish was responsible for developing scalable processes for partner onboarding, training, quality and fraud control, and for managing payments. Aadish has been instrumental in new product development and for implementing various strategic initiatives for the brand.

Prabhat Agrawal is currently heading the Runnr Corporate Meals vertical in Bengaluru. An IIT Guwahati graduate, Prabhat has been the Chief Operating Officer (COO) at Dazo, a foodtech delivery startup in 2015. Prior to this, he cofounded Pepper’s Online Supermarket.

Ankit Jain leads “all things data” at Runnr, where his team uses advanced machine learning and statistical skills to solve the complex last mile logistics problems in India. Prior to this, he has worked at Facebook in Silicon Valley where he contributed as a Data Scientist. He specifically designed a novel spam detection technique for Facebook pages which was eventually implemented to all the users. Ankit holds a Master’s degree from UC Berkeley and a Bachelors in Electrical Engineering from IIT Bombay. Ankit has also worked with Bank of America and Clearslide.

Fresh Meat Brand Zappfresh Appoints Ex-Mobikwik Executive As Chief Technology Officer

Zappfresh, an online meat brand making fresh, hygienic meat easily accessible and affordable to consumers, announced the appointment of Ankur Shrivastava as Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Ankur specialises in building high-performance scalable systems, product-based research, and problem-solving techniques.

Prior to joining Zappfresh, Ankur was a part of the core team at MobiKwik and was responsible for setting up and developing scalable tech for the company which supported lakhs of transactions per day.

Ankur started his career with Infosys where he worked as a Senior Software Engineer.

At Zappfresh, Ankur’s role includes inventing technology and processes for farmtech which will help connect farmers, vendors and retail channels. It’ll be on him to solve the open-ended challenges in farmtech systems like – real-time data and assets tracking, visibility and automated tagging of inventory in offline systems, reducing and optimising time etc. These systems will help in strengthening the brand and assist in cost optimisation.

Public WiFi Network O-Zone Networks Bolsters Management Team With New Hires

OZone Networks Ltd has announced new developments in the company’s management team with new hires. Deepanshu Tyagi has joined as the National Head of Sales & Marketing, Jitesh Kejriwal as Head of Products and Monetization, Proloy Mitra as Tech Architect, and Bhavana Kher as HR Manager. In addition to this, Meena Mahajan has been appointed to undertake the distinct role of Chief of Staff.

With Sanjeev ‘Bobby’ Sarin having assumed broader responsibility as the India CEO of New Sparta Asset Management , OZone Networks is actively looking to bring on a Managing Director to run the day to day operations. Bobby, as the founder and CEO of OZone Networks, will continue to lead the company along with his new additional responsibility.

With over 10 years of telecom experience in managing large business portfolios and handling business pan-India and across international markets, the National Head of Sales & Marketing  at OZone, Deepanshu Tyagi  is focussed on driving growth through business generation from existing and new portfolio of customers.

As Head of Products and Monetisation, Jitesh Kejriwal is responsible for creating strategies and product plans that will build OZone’s competitive advantage and drive revenue growth for product solutions. He will work across functions to ensure technology, business, and customer needs are aligned.

With proven proficiency across all aspects of the product monetisation cycle, Proloy Mitra is responsible for establishing OZone’s technical vision. He is leading all aspects of technology including development of the product, building the technology team, and leading the team through development programmes that are in line with OZone’s strategic objectives.

Bhavna Kher has recently been appointed as the HR Manager. Prior to this, she has international experience of providing HR consulting to large UK corporate houses and has also worked with ICICI Bank in India . In her new role at OZone, she will oversee all human resources, recruiting, training and development functions.

A successful transformational speaker and life coach, Meena Mahajan is the Chief of Staff at OZone. Meena is leveraging her diverse experience of over 17+ years across fields like Anthropology, Forensics, Yoga, Meditation and Magnified Healing to promote organisational effectiveness and drive new HR initiatives. Her role includes driving initiatives that help maintain a positive environment that promotes individual development and high-performance standards.

Snapdeal Appoints Industry Veteran Pradeep Desai As Senior Vice President, Engineering

Snapdeal has announced the appointment of Pradeep Desai as Senior Vice President – Engineering. With more than 14 years in the industry, Pradeep has been at the forefront of building many industry-first, technology-enabled logistics solutions, which are well known in the global ecommerce industry. In his new role, Pradeep will be responsible for spearheading a team that builds innovative logistics interventions and creates a world-class delivery experience.

Prior to his appointment at Snapdeal, Pradeep spent three years at Groupon, where he led product and engineering functions, encompassing aspects like logistics management, seller and interface experiences. Before Groupon, Pradeep had an 11-year-long stint with Amazon, where he worked in various capacities across key departments such as logistics, advertising and marketing.In the first half of his career there, he helped build many of the building blocks of Amazon’s transportation, fulfilment, and supply chain.

Pradeep holds a Master’s degree in Computer Science from The University of Texas at Austin and a Bachelors in Computer Science from IIT Madras.