Rahul Yadav, the Chief Executive Officer of Housing.com, is undoubtedly in the news these days, but not always for the right reasons.

The 26-year-old’s antics seemingly started with him writing a email to the head of the venture capital firm Sequoia Capital in India, Shailendra Singh, accusing him of unethically poaching Housing.com employees. That letter somehow found its way on Quora.

While that news was still making the rounds, Yadav got into a spat with the board of his company – including investors like Japan’s SoftBank, Helion Ventures, Nexus Ventures and Qualcomm Ventures – and tendered his resignation. That resignation letter too somehow went public, before being withdrawn by Yadav.

As if all this excitement wasn’t enough for him, Yadav decided to “gift” all his shares in the company, estimated to be worth over Rs 150 crore, to the employees of Housing.com. He then publicly challenged the CEOs of Zomato and Ola to give up half their shares as well.

Given this background, the only thing people expected when Yadav announced that he would be doing an AMA – shorthand for “Ask Me Anything” – on the social networking website Reddit was provocation. The AMA on Tuesday evening was nothing like that. Yadav answered questions calmly while staying away from controversies. Yet he couldn't help tossing a few jibes.


This is how Yadav introduced himself on the AMA:
"Rahul hails from Alwar, Rajasthan where he received his primary education. He later went to IIT Bombay for higher studies, where he created a question bank from old exam papers to build the popular Exambaba.com. Exambaba was made the official IIT-B archive before eventually being shut down. After a brief internship in Israel, Yadav returned to build apps for Google Chrome. And then, in his final year, dropped out of IIT. Later, he joined his friends to co-found Housing.com.”

The questioning got off to an odd start, with natmastak asking for a picture of Yadav with a banana. The Housing.com CEO duly obliged.


Expectedly, the attention soon turned to Yadav’s recent actions. zturtle asked: “With due respect to your achievements, do you think your actions are going to be harmful for young entrepreneurs as VC's might now believe young Indians can't handle success.”
“I think the market should wait before passing a judgment on whether I am helpful or harmful for the young entrepreneurs.”

iHEx4Sex was more specific than zturtle: “What was the deal with Sequoia Capital? For science, Can you tell us what 'other bad things' were you referring to in your email to the VC?”
“We decided a slided deal between 10-15% (depending on performance)for 1mn$. After 2 months of due diligence, when they realised we were running out money, they said they want to do a flat equity deal. I said ‘Okay. Let’s do it at 12.5%. They said 14.75%. When I requested more, they said “Let’s not waste each other’s time.” We were left with no option.

I came to know they have done it with lots of other ventures (TFS, Ola, Dexetra, LetsBuy..)

So to cut it short, I think they’re culturally a very cutthroat VC and sometimes I think that’s why they’re more successful than others. But I still condemn their practises because I feel they’re inhuman and for me, people are the ‘why’ for everything I do."

daftmatrix and woccamrazor wanted to know Yadav’s views on Zomato’s CEO Deepinder Goyal.
“I really don't know him much but his sense of humour sucks."

onepointsixkmdavis asked what Yadav's employees felt about his recent behaviour.
“Yes, it is distracting. But it's actually fun if it's there only for a few weeks. Beyond that, it's really distracting and does not help."

cabuliwallah enquired about the origins of Housing.com’s tagline "Look Up".
“Because when you Look Up you only see people who are ahead of you in terms of greatness and achievements. No matter how much you have achieved in your life, the moment you Look Up, everything gets reset and you find yourself again at level 0.

To Look Up means to always keep chasing the best! To Look Up means to always keep asking 'What's next'. To Look Up means getting ready for the action. To Look up means to never settle."

Knock_Hard asked whether being mean is a part of running a successful start-up.
“There are no rules! I play by the situation."

Ssasmisltlywll wanted Yadav to name the start-ups he respects.
"Flipkart, for maintaining relative quality (in product, service and culture). They have earned respect in terms of implementation and execution and not because of the idea.

Uber and Twitter, slick products solving big problems."

Following up on that, ola_bhavesh asked whether Yadav, if given a chance, would ever redo Ola.
“I will never do Ola because that problem was already solved by UBER and in a brilliant way. I'll never do a me-too thing and waste my life".

sidhVj asked what Yadav would do if he quit Housing.com.
“Never thought about it. But I love animation and visual effects and wanted to pursue it from Vancouver Film School but couldn’t afford their high fees at the time.”

Takatakha asked about why he quit IIT Bombay in his final year.
“I think I mentally dropped out of IIT in 2nd year. Physically in my 4th year. And on papers, I think I’m still an IITB student".

Here are some personal tidbits shared for the amusement of the Reddit community.

* He does not own a Porsche. He uses a rented car.
* GhotaBheem asked whether he watched Chhota Bheem. “Bhai pichle 11 saal se TV nahi dekha hai.”
* He’s a huge fan of butter milk.
* Someone really wanted to get hired. Yadav’s one line reply: “Drop me an email...with the subject 'Why you should hire me' and explain it in just 3 lines.”
* He has never read a any book in his life.
* He has no time for fun. “I leave for office at 10am and come back by 10pm. So I really don't get time to chill out!”
* He left coding over three years ago.

For good measure, Yadav trolled Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal, first on the AMA – “A company scanning menus from last 7 years and doing no innovation. And the CEO says 'Aww. So cute.'” – and then on Facebook:


Goyal responded to the trolling on Twitter on Tuesday night and then again this morning.

 

A Zomato employee, Neel Ghose, joined the banter.