NestAway co-founder Deepak Dhar is leaving; to start fintech firm

Several firms have been seeing top-level management churn these days. Most of the times the reason behind the same has been one of the CXOs leaving to start their own enterprises. And these days, this new gig is often related to fintech.

Sachin Bansal took a hefty exit in the Walmart-Flipkart deal and started BACQ to acquire fintech and agritech startups, and has since then invested in several fintech startups via the debt route.

Now, Nestway’s co-founder and CXO - Deepak Dhar - has decided to end his journey at the home rental portal and start his own fintech business. To be fair, Dhar had earlier been a Founding Member and Operations head at Citrus Payments, a mobile banking solution provider and consumer payment platform.

In a way, his new gig should be a return to his previous segment of work - fintech. Since fintech is a hot cake right now, and Dhar has the experience, it is fair to understand the move arises out of a hunger to grab a slice of this cake at the right moment.

However, this management churn at NestAway is bigger than Dhar’s exit. According to a Mint report, over four Senior VP level employees have also left the firm since April.

Amarendra Sahu, co-founder and CEO of the firm told Mint that the reason behind this is that April is the time of promotions and raises and it's natural that a few people left after that. According to him, Dhar’s exit was also planned and the company has been preparing a succession plan from past 6 months. 

Another factor that adds to his explanation is that NestAway is also in the middle of its latest Series D round where it has already received $15 million in its search for a $100-150 million investment. Tiger Global, Chiratae Ventures, and Ratan Tata’s UC-RNT fund each have contributed $5 million.

As this round takes place, it is possible that the senior level employees holding ESOPs, especially Dhar with his significant equity, might have found an avenue to convert this equity into cash and move on to start their own ventures or choose a different path.

For NestAway, this round is a catalyst for its expansion plans where the firm has already launched a separate co-living and co-working platform Hello World. Entrackr had exclusively covered this development. Jitendra Jagadev, COO and the remaining co-founder at NestAway will be heading this division, as well as other upcoming forays.

This is important because the company is also in plans to start a platform for women’s housing and senior living management in the next year.

 The NestAway till these expansions operated under two entities - NestAway India Pvt. Ltd. and NestAway Technologies Pvt. Ltd. In February and March this year, the group registered two new companies - NestAssist Services Pvt. Ltd. and Hello World Technologies Pvt. Ld. respectively.

While we all know Hello World is the entity for the co-living and co-working platform, it looks like NestAssist can be the entity that would run the senior living management platform. OYO, a now indirect competitor of NestAway has also been planning its foray into the segment, and this move by the firm is slated to increase the close competition between them.

Sahu and Jagadev are sharpening focus on the new league of management as well as the expanding ops at the firm. They have hired several new senior executives for the proper execution of these plans, and are also slowing down on the funding process to focus on the results of these new entities.

It is also important to note that Dhar, as of now, only has directorship in NestAssist and no other entity of NestAway. And it also seems that his plans to get back into fintech with a business are still work-in-progress as there is no other newly registered entity under his name, apart from NestAssist.