Among the prominent appointments this year was former Google Pay vice president Ambarish Kenghe’s elevation as group chief executive at stockbroking firm Angel One, which is pushing deeper into wealthtech and digital investing.
Another high-profile change was Flipkart’s former chief product and technology officer Jeyandran Venugopal stepping down earlier this year to join Reliance Retail Ventures–the holding company for the retail business of Reliance Industries–as its chief executive officer.
The conglomerate has set an internal target of 2028 for the initial public offering of its retail business, recalibrating its strategy to sharpen profitability and improve valuation ahead of the listing.
Anshuman Das, chief executive of Longhouse Consulting, said rising IPO activity among new-age companies has pushed boards to rope in senior executives to sharpen their focus on governance and leadership, while a maturing startup ecosystem has also expanded the pool of seasoned CEO talent.
ETtech
“This year has been a much bigger year for startups as compared to last year. There has been an overall IPO movement happening in the companies, so a lot of them have started picking up governance, leadership things far more seriously. As a result, we will find founders bringing in professional CEOs much a little bit early in the game,” Das said.
The year also saw Sajith Sivanandan, former president of Jio Mobile Digital Services, join Tata Digital as its chief executive officer, becoming the third CEO since the platform’s launch in 2019 amid a broader leadership and strategy reset. He has been tasked with sharpening execution and future readiness at the Tata Group’s ecommerce venture.
In edtech, Rakesh Ranjan, former chief executive of Eternal-owned food delivery platform Zomato, joined Allen Online, the digital arm of Allen Career Institute, which is betting on his experience in scaling technology-led consumer businesses.
Das of Longhouse Consulting said several of India’s largest consumer internet companies have reached a scale where they are increasingly producing senior leadership talent for the broader corporate ecosystem. According to him, these platforms are emerging as the country’s new “CEO factories”, a role traditionally played by legacy organisations such as Hindustan Unilever and consulting firms like McKinsey, as the startup ecosystem matures and executives gain experience running large, complex businesses.
Fintech’s big bets
Top-level churn was seen in fintech platforms, too. Sandiip Bharadwaj, who served as chief operating and digital officer at HDFC Securities, leading its tech-led discount broking business HDFC Sky, took over as managing director and CEO at Paytm Money, following leadership transitions at the fintech firm. Bharadwaj replaced Rakesh Singh, who had joined Paytm Money as CEO last year.
To steer digital credit startup Lendingkart through tightening regulatory scrutiny and a challenging macroeconomic environment, majority shareholder Temasek-owned Fullerton Financial Holdings appointed Prashant Joshi, former managing director at DBS Bank, as the company’s chief executive, replacing cofounder Harshvardhan Lunia.
The leadership change was followed by a deepening of troubles at the fintech company. As reported by ET, a legal dispute has erupted between Lunia, Lendingkart Technologies, the company’s holding entity and Fullerton. Lunia has moved the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), alleging violations of the terms under which Fullerton gradually acquired a 56% stake in Lendingkart.
At brokerage firm 5Paisa, Gaurav Seth was named chief executive after a stint in product leadership at digital wealth management platform Syfe.
Ecommerce making a move
Snapdeal, long trying to reassert relevance in India’s highly competitive ecommerce marketplace, went outside its cofounder circle to bring in Achint Setia, formerly with online fashion firm Zalora Group and online fashion marketplace Myntra, as chief executive, betting that his product and revenue-marketing background will help stabilise the company’s marketplace business.
Meanwhile, Siddhartha Gupta was appointed as chief executive of travel booking platform Yatra Online, as cofounder Dhruv Shringi, who had served as CEO since the company’s inception, moved into the role of executive chairman. Gupta joined from consulting firm Mercer, where he served as India president.
As the ecosystem matures, industry executives noted that the era of founder-only leadership teams is gradually giving way to execution-driven CEO appointments.
