All is not that well in the Indian startup ecosystem. Hosuing.com, one of India’s most sought after startups and Sequoia Capital, a marquee venture capital fund, have found themselves engulfed in a hot controversy.
A leaked email from Housing.com’s founder Rahul Yadav to Sequoia Capital’s MD Shailendra Singh has given birth to this controversy. The email written on 6th march with subject “Last Straw” has accused the venture capital fund of poaching Housing.com’s employees and being “unethical” towards entrepreneurs in general. Apart from Housing.com, Sequoia has also invested in some of top startups like Zomato, Mu Sigma and Just Dial.
According to the mail written by Yadav, the venture capital fund is trying to brainwash his company’s employees towards starting a new incubator.
Sequoia’s Singh chose to respond to the controversy via Quora, a question and answer website. This controversy shows that all is not hunky-dory between some founders and investors in the Indian startup world.
Singh sounded deeply sad and hurt in his long response on the Q&A site. According to Singh’s response, “My best guess is that this mail has been triggered by an offer that we made to one of the Housing employees to join us as an analyst." He further wrote, "I would still like to use this opportunity to talk about something larger and close to my heart - how will we all work together to create a better startup ecosystem in India? For us, that means not being vindictive and petty and instead being collaborative with the ecosystem - to focus on what matters in the long term. While I don't know Rahul well personally, and have only met him one-on-one once, I felt incredibly nice to read a recent article about how Housing has been one of the most active breeding grounds for new startups.
He concluded his response by writing, “At Sequoia, we consider it a privilege to do what we do - and be trusted by some of the best and brightest entrepreneurs, not just to be in their cap table, but to have a seat around the table to help set direction for their companies. I wish the Housing team and Rahul good luck."
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