Rahul Yadav: Housing.Com's Maverick Entrepreneur

This case discusses the dilemma faced by the investors and board of the real estate online search portal, Housing.com, with regard to retaining the entrepreneur and co-founder of the company, Rahul Yadav (Yadav), as the CEO of the company. Yadav was mired in several controversies. It all started with an e-mail he wrote on March 6, 2015, to Shailendra Singh (Singh), Managing Director of the venture capital firm, Sequoia India (Sequoia), accusing him of poaching employees from Housing.com. With the spat between Yadav and Singh becoming public, The Economic Times (ET), an Indian daily published by Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. (BCCL), the holding company of the Times Group, one of India’s largest media conglomerates, carried a report on March 12, 2015, stating that the investors at Housing.com were considering removing Yadav from the post of CEO as they were concerned that his behavior would jeopardize the future of Housing.com.

Dismissing the claims made by ET, Yadav denied that he was being replaced. Yadav again courted trouble when he sent an internal e-mail to his employees on the day the report was published, alleging that the Times Group, which ran a competing real estate online portal MagicBricks.com, was maligning Housing.com in India. In response to this e-mail, on March 17, 2015, Locon Solutions Pvt Ltd., owner of Housing.com, received a legal notice from BCCL for defamation and claimed US$ 16 million in damages...