Post the announcement of the merger of PropTiger and Housing.com, the latter’s CEO Jason Kothari had decided to move on in search of other new opportunities. And the same has come knocking on his door sooner than one could’ve expected. Kothari is still to move on from Housing.com but has been snapped up by homegrown e-commerce giant Snapdeal.
As per the official statement, Kothari has been appointed as the Chief Strategy and Investment Officer for Snapdeal. He will be joining the company on January 16. In this prominent leadership role, he’ll work alongside co-founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal.
His responsibilities in this new role include leading strategy and corporate development, including investments and strategic partnerships carried out by the company. Kothari is also being entrusted with another major task, which could prove to be challenging for anyone. The company also expects him to help raise fresh capital and manage its investment portfolio. He’ll also oversee the functioning of Snapdeal’s wholly owned companies — Freecharge or those the co-founders have invested in.
Commenting on the said appointment, Snapdeal CEO Kunal Bahl says,
Jason is a strong business leader & entrepreneur who has already been the CEO of two successful companies. Rohit and I warmly welcome Jason to the Snapdeal family and believe we will achieve even greater heights with his addition.
Prior to joining one of the largest homegrown e-commerce behemoths, Kothari was appointed at the helm of real-estate company Housing. He had been roped in to join the real-estate giant from character-based entertainment company Valiant Entertainment, which he founded. Kothari can be called a fixer as he has previously led the acquisition and an impeccable turnaround of former $65 million unit of video game company Acclaim Entertainment.
As for Housing, he had been appointed as the chief business executive of an online venture, which had suffered a massive internal strife. But he still managed to steer the suffering real-estate startup out from its poor state. Kothari, via organic as well as inorganic methods, managed to turn the company’s business around.
Talking about his appointment, Kothari says,
I’m excited to join Kunal & Rohit at Snapdeal during a defining period in Indian e-commerce that will shape the future of the Indian internet space. Snapdeal is on its way to building one of India’s best companies, and I look forward to helping in making that potential a reality.
Snapdeal, with Freecharge in tow, is currently trying to find a grip on the maturing e-commerce ecosystem of the country. With leaders like Amazon and Flipkart, the said e-commerce giant currently stands at the third position. But, it now plans to cut losses and let Kothari take up his fixer role and help it further expand its operations.
Till date, Snapdeal has secured close to $1.8 billion in twelve rounds, which were led by marquee investors. These include SoftBank Group, BlackRock, Temasek, Foxconn, Alibaba, Intel Capital, and Bessemer Venture Partners, among others.
