Rahul Yadav is an Indian entrepreneur, known as the co-founder and former CEO of real-estate search portal Housing.com.
For his work at Housing.com, Yadav made the Forbes India list of "30 Under 30" young entrepreneurs. Called "bad boy of Indian startups", he is often compared with Steve Jobs for his product skills and brash behaviour with investors and media.
Citing "I’m just 26 and it’s too early in life to get serious about money" for an interview in Financial Express, he distributed all of his personal equity in Housing.com, worth around 200 crore rupees, to its 2,251 employees.
His dismissal as CEO by Housing.com's board of directors attracted considerable media attention.
Subsequently, Yadav announced his latest venture, Intelligent Interfaces which would assist companies and organisations in automating processes.
The company is backed by Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, co-founders of the Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart and Youwecan ventures also announced that they would be participating in the seed round as well.
Key Description:
Born: 1990 (age 30 years), Alwar
Spouse: Karishma Khokhar
Education: Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (2007–2011)
Organization founded: Housing.com
Occupation: CTO Anarock Property Consultants (formerly JLL Residential),
Former Co-Founder& CEO Housing.com
Co-Founder of: Intelligent Interfaces
Years Active: 2012 to present
Known for: Housing.com
Notable work: Housing.com, exambaba
Social Network: Facebook, LinkedIn
Life and career of Rahul Yadav:
Yadav was born to middle-class parents from Khairtal, Rajasthan. He enrolled at Indian Institute of Technology Bombay in 2007, specialising in metallurgy.
He served as the representative and secretary for the university's student association.
After first building Exambaba.com, an online question bank of old exam papers that IIT Bombay asked Yadav to close, Rahul dropped out of college in his final year.
In the process of building Exambaba.com, he had learned programming, which enabled him to subsequently design a series of Google applications. In 2012, he along with eleven other classmates co-founded Housing.com, after they had a difficult time finding accommodation in Mumbai.
He came up with a new venture related to virtual, augmented reality, and interfaces.
Housing.com:
Housing.co.in was founded in 2012, and was later renamed Housing.com. Yadav says that he started up Housing.com in response to a severe housing shortage in India. By mid-2015, under Yadav's leadership, Housing.com had three offices in Powai, a suburb of Mumbai.
The site aims to increase transparency in the real estate market. Its original line-up of products include map-based rental search, verified purchase of apartments, buildings and even land in villages and rural areas and 'Slice View' which allows customers to take a virtual tour of chosen properties of big real estate companies.
Having successfully solicited major investors to back the site, Yadav retained only a five per cent share in the business which later made it possible for investors to oust him.
Housing.com was named one of the hottest tech startups in 2012. SoftBank was among its funding partners, and the fledgling company also partnered with Tata Housing and Tata Value Homes.
According to Forbes India, Housing.com sold eight million dollars' worth of real estate in its first week.
In June 2015, Rahul was fired by the company board citing "his behaviour towards investors, ecosystem and the media".
The shares of his business that Yadav donated to his former employees was considered to be the equivalent to a year's salary. In an apparent explanation of his actions, Yadav said, "I'm just 26 and it's too early in life to get serious about money, etc," in an interview with the Financial Express.
Intelligent Interfaces:
In September 2015, Rahul announced his new venture Intelligent Interfaces. The company had secured angel investment from co-founders of Flipkart, Paytm, YouWeCan and Micromax.
Intelligent Interfaces is reportedly a data analytics company and visualization company catering to e-commerce companies.
CTO At Anarock:
In July 2017, Rahul joined Anarock Property Consultants in the role of a Chief Product and Technology Officer. He left Anarock in March 2020. Yadav was responsible for the development of a technology-driven online brokerage platform for Anarock.