Rahul Yadav does it again -- donates his Housing.com stake to employees

Rahul Yadav, CEO of real estate e-commerce portal Housing.com, on Wednesday allotted all his personal shares -- worth around Rs 150-200 crore - to the 2,251 employees of the company, it said in a statement.
He made the announcement at the company townhall that was attended by all employees of Housing.com.

"I'm just 26 and it's too early in life to get serious about money, etc," he said.

The employees will get approximately one year of their annual salaries worth of Housing.com stocks. Yadav and Housing.com were in the news recently when the CEO controversially resigned, only to withdraw his resignation later.

While explaining the reason behind the move, Yadav said, "Housing was started because of two reasons. First, house hunting problem is unsolved globally. Just the problem statement gives me a lot of kick. Second, in each and every country, there are 4-5 players doing the same poor job and still not able to solve the problem. Across the globe there are 500-plus players. We want to unify all and create a global giant for real estate so that the one company can afford much higher level of R&D and Technological innovation to push the category forward."

Yadav had resigned on April 30 in an e-mail addressed to board members and investors, but subsequently withdrew it.

Meanwhile, he wrote on Facebook: "Going to office these days feels exactly like being back at school. Get up on time, take shower, dress nicely, slotted day hrs and yes, there are still those goddamn 'board' exams". It has gone viral since then.

The startup's biggest shareholder SoftBank is believed to be overseeing all its major decisions after the boardroom tussle.

In December last year, Housing.com received $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 in India.

Founded in 2012 by a dozen IITians, the Mumbai-based company currently offers services in rent/resale, PG/hostels, new projects, land/plot projects, home loans and rental agreement among others.

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