Movers And Shakers Of The Week [22 May – 27 May]

These are the movers and shakers for the week.

Japanese investment firm SoftBank Group has elected Rajeev Misra, CEO, SoftBank Investment Advisors  to be included in the next-formed Board of Members. Misra is currently heading $100 Bn tech-focussed Vision Fund that SoftBank launched in January 2017 that made a first close with $93 Bn last week. The other candidates elected for the members of the board include Marcelo Claure, President and CEO of Sprint corporation, Simon Segars, CEO of ARM Holding Plc, Mark Schwartz, Senior Director of Goldman, Sachs and Co., and Yassir O Al-Rumayyan, Managing Director and Board Member of the Public Investment Fund (PIF) of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Mohit Dubey Joins Zophop On A Full Time Basis

Mohit Dubey, mentor and investor at Zophop Technologies has joined the company on a full-time basis. In this new role, Mohit will leverage his experience in building a highly successful consumer offering and attaining scale in both operations and monetisation. He will focus on the growth strategy of the company and also drive certain strategic initiatives.

Prior to Zophop, Mohit had founded CarWale.com in 2005, which went on to become India’s leading platform for both new and used cars. In 2015, CarWale was acquired by Cartrade and Mohit went on to serve as the CEO of CarWale and Board Member of the combined entity through the transition period till March 2017.

He, along with Vinayak Bhavnani, then founded Zophop in 2014 with the goal of making public transit easier for commuters. Till his recent appointment, however, he was involved only as a mentor and investor.

Living Local Strengthens Board Of Advisors

Living Local, a first of its kind Neighbor’HOOD’ platform, has appointed Sachin Khandelwal, MD and CEO of Magma Housing Finance, Anaggh Desai, Founder of AD Consults, and Akash Bhatia, Co-founder and CEO of Infinite Analytics to its advisory board.

The trio will use their expertise into Living Local to help the team accelerate their efforts into the right direction.

Sachin Khandelwal will be acting as Revenue and financial growth advisor. He has an extensive experience in the field of banking and finance of over 14 years. Before Magma, he acted as MD/CEO to ICICI Home Finance Company where he worked on vehicle finance, cards & merchants payments and headed mobile commerce initiatives.

Anaggh Desai will be acting as marketing advisor. He has been in the industry for over 25 years in varied industries like retail, experiences, customer loyalty and startups. Besides being a business coach he is also an avid writer and periodically contributes to BusinessWorld Marketing Whitebook, BW, Business Today, DNA and other publications.

Akash Bhatia’s venture Infinite Analytic is backed by Ratan Tata and boasts of having Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web as one of its advisors. Akash who acts as Startup advisor for Living Local, also co-founded India’s first and largest ticketing company, Kyazoonga.

Living Local started with 4 neighborhoods in Mumbai and have grown pan Mumbai with presence in 56 neighborhoods and is planning to expand to other markets. These appointments are in line with living locals business expansion.

IAMAI Appoints Members For New Council

The IAMAI has made several appointments as part of the formation of new council, which will have a tenure of two years. It will work towards increasing the internet users’ base, especially in rural areas as well as towards the promotion of local language content .

The other companies in the new council include Times Internet, OLX, Policy Bazaar, Yatra, Paytm, Hungama, Mobikwik, Indiamart, Itzcash, Pepperfry, amongst others.

Rajan Anandan, Vice President, Southeast Asia and India, Google, has been appointed as the new Chairman of Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI). He takes over from Kunal Shah, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, FreeCharge. Deep Kalra, Chairman and Group CEO, MakeMyTrip, will be the new Vice Chairman of IAMAI. He takes over his new role from Vinodh Bhat, Co-Founder and President – Saavn.

Umang Bedi, Managing Director – India and South Asia at Facebook, has been elected as the new Treasurer of the Association. Dr. Subho Ray continues to be the President of the Association.

Flipkart CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy Given Charge Of HR Portfolio

Flipkart’s HR department which was reporting to recently promoted COO Nitin Sethi will now report directly to the CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy. With this move, both finance and HR portfolios will come under Krishnamurthy’s purview. The CFO Sriram Venkataraman will report to him.

The company is looking for a Head of HR to take charge of the department.

Krishnamurthy also looks after private labels, customer shopping and marketing as well as the engineering team. The category design management department, previously headed by Krishnamurthy before he took over as CEO in 2016 also reports to him.

Flipkart, which is celebrating its 10 year anniversary celebrations recently held a contest to appoint a new CEO for a day. The contest was won by Padmini Madarapakam Pagadala in April 2017 where, the winner took charge of the daily operations of the company with CEO Krishnamurthy acting as advisor.