RISHAD PREMJI TAKES OVER AS WIPRO CHAIRMAN

Rishad Premji took over as Wipro Executive Chairman in a low-key handover from his father Azim Premji. Senior Premji had decided to step down from his position as Chairman in June.

Azim Premji will continue to serve as the Non-Executive Director on the board and the Founder Chairman.

The 74-year-old czar of the Indian IT industry converted a cooking oil company into $8.5 billion IT behemoth and led the company for over five decades.

“I am very excited about our future and the opportunity to create value for all our stakeholders in these transformative times for Wipro and the technology industry. I look forward to their trust, collaboration and support,” 42-year-old Rishad had earlier told media persons.

Coffee Day Enterprises appoints SV Ranganath as interim chairman

Coffee Day Enterprises Ltd, the operator of the Cafe Coffee Day chain, appointed independent director SV Ranganath as the interim Chairman of its board after the sudden death of its founder VG Siddhartha, the company said in a regulatory filing.

The founder was found dead on 31 July, 36 hours after he went missing from a bridge near Mangaluru in Karnataka. In a regulatory filing after its board meeting, the company said: “The Board remains deeply committed to safeguarding the interests of all stakeholders, including investors, lenders, employees and customers.”

The board also decided to appoint Nitin Bagmane, chairman of Coffee Day Enterprises unit Tanglin Developments, as an interim Chief Operating Officer of the company, according to the filing. The Board has also appointed the law firm, Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas, as its legal counsel to advise it on the foregoing and related matters.

Capillary hires Vikram Bhat as Chief Product Officer

Bengaluru-based Capillary technologies announced the appointment of Vikram Bhat as Chief Product Officer.

Bhat comes with close to two decades of global experience in product strategy, management and business consulting encompassing domains such as retail, ecommerce and financial services. Prior to this, he was the Chief Product Officer at Lendingkart. Bhat has also stewarded product development teams at Myntra, ABOF and Oracle. In his previous organizations, he has been instrumental in launching innovative ideas such as shoppable fashion stories etc.

In his new leadership role at capillary, Bhat will be at the helm of affairs for an ever-increasing product portfolio – AI powered consumer engagement, e-commerce and consumer data platform. He will work closely with global customers and the product teams to deepen the focus on consumer engagement and e-commerce products, scale up the AI powered InStore product and also launch a slew of new products in consumer data space.

Youngest Essar scion Rewant Ruia engaged

Wedding bells may soon ring in the Ruia family with the youngest member of the family, Rewant, getting engaged to his girlfriend Karishma Choraria, sources close to the family said.

Rewant Ruia is the son of the Essar founder Ravi Ruia, the company that had a net worth of Rs.3,96,50,80,00,000 in 2017.

Considered one of the most eligible bachelors of corporate India, Rewant Ruia’s engagement ceremony was organized at the celebrity favorite destination, the Taj Falaknuma Palace in Hyderabad. The ceremony was attended only by close family members and friends.

Rewant’s fiancée Karishma, has been raised in London, has a Marwari father and a Norwegian mother. The couple has been in a celebratory mood for some time now. Recently, the two with some friends took a private jet to a music festival in Miami.

The process for control of Essar Steel is still continuing as legal clarity is yet to emerge. Rewant, also sits on the board of Essar Global Holdings Limited and Essar Constructions (India) Limited as Director.

Byju CEO becomes India’s latest billionaire

Byju Raveendran, the CEO of of Byju’s learning app, has joined the club of Indian billionaires, becoming the newest billionaire in the list. The 37-year-old former teacher from a small village in Kerala joined the rarefied club after his Think and Learn Pvt scored $150 million in funding earlier in July.

A Reuters report suggested that that Venture capital fund, Owl Ventures, also participated in the funding round, the proceeds of which will be used for Byju’s international expansion.

The deal gives Raveendran’s eponymous business a valuation of $5.7 billion, sending his own personal wealth over the billion-dollar threshold.

Raveendran holds a 21% stake in the education technology company, which is backed by investors including the Qatar Investment Authority, Tencent and Mark Zuckerberg.

The entrepreneur’s feat sees him become one of India’s youngest billionaires, joining the country’s recent wave of newly-minted millennial unicorn founders such as Flipkart’s Binny Bansal and Sachin Bansal.

The new billionaire now has his sights set on global expansion, targeting the US and the UK following a recent partnership with Walt Disney Co.

Raveendran, who has said he wants to do for education what Disney did for entertainment, said the collaboration will help children learn with the help of their favorite characters by featuring them in their interactive content.

“Kids everywhere relate to Disney’s Simba or Moana, who grip kids’ attention before we take them through the loop of learning,” CEO Raveendran said.

“We are customizing Disney Byju’s to the American and British school curriculum. The characters have universal appeal,” Raveendran said.

HomeLane Appoints Balaji Chandran as Chief Product Officer

Bengaluru-based home interior design startup, HomeLane, has appointed Balaji Chandran as the company’s Chief Product Officer (CPO), reporting to Srikanth Iyer, cofounder and CEO, HomeLane. He will be based at HomeLane’s head office in Bengaluru.

In over two decades of experience, he was last working with Flipkart where he was the Head of Product for user engagement. His expertise extends from startups to IT Services and Consulting as well as Business Product Management. He has also worked with Microsoft, eBay, Amazon and Yahoo.

In his new role, Chandran will spearhead HomeLane’s product strategy formation as well as execution. His focus will be to drive a scalable product portfolio that will in turn result in business profitability and improved consumer engagement. He will be responsible for product design, innovation, development and management.

Guruprasad Mohapatra takes charge as DPIIT secretary

Guruprasad Mohapatra, an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer of 1986 batch, assumed charge as the Secretary of the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry.

Mohapatra replaces Ramesh Abhishek who has retired after 37 years of public service.

Prior to taking over as the Secretary of DPIIT, Mohapatra served as the Chairman of the Airports Authority of India (AAI), an official statement said.

“Mohapatra brought about many changes in AAI’s strategic operations. He gave new direction to AAI and steered it to achieve greater excellence in the sector of airport infrastructure development not only at the metro airports but also in Tier-II and Tier-III cities,” the statement said.

He had earlier served as a Joint Secretary in the Department of Commerce, where he worked for the promotion of special economic zones (SEZs), public procurement and project exports (financing and insurance).

Mohapatra held the portfolio of municipal commissioner in Surat, Gujarat, and was involved in the process of converting Surat into one of the models of urban governance with its thrust on solid waste management, quality infrastructure and sound financial management.

As the Municipal Commissioner of Ahmedabad, he was instrumental in developing several urban projects such as the Sabarmati riverfront, BRTS, Kankaria lakefront and heritage promotion. He also served as the Transport Commissioner and Commissioner (commercial taxes) in Gujarat, the statement said.

In January this year, the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) was renamed as the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT).

The DPIIT has been tasked with looking at matters related to promotion of internal trade, including retail trade, welfare of traders and their employees, facilitating ease of doing business and startups.

Jeff Bezos cashed in another $990 mn Amazon shares

Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos sold over 530,000 Amazon shares in the first two days of August for $990 million. After taxes, he will net an estimated $750 million in cash from the sales.

The sales on August 1 and 2 followed $1.4 billion (aftertax) worth of Amazon stock he sold in the final three days of July.

As the richest man on earth, Bezos is now worth an estimated $110.1 billion.

A spokesman for Amazon has not commented on the purpose for Bezos’ last stock sales. The leading theory is that it is to fund Blue Origin, a space exploration company that Bezos founded in September 2000. Bezos told journalists at a space exploration conference in 2017 that he was funding Blue Origin by selling some of his Amazon shares.

According to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the world’s richest man sold over 530,000 shares of Amazon when the stock price was around $1,900 a share.

Bezos gave his former wife MacKenzie a fourth of his Amazon stake, or 19.7 million shares. The couple finalized their divorce in April. MacKenzie has decided to donate half of her $38 billion worth alimony to investor Warren Buffett’s philanthropic campaign-the Giving Pledge.

GoDaddy Appoints Aman Bhutani as CEO

GoDaddy and its Board of Directors has named Aman Bhutani, previously President of Brand Expedia Group, as the company’s new CEO, effective 4 September, 2019. Scott Wagner, Chief Executive Officer, will step down for health reasons.

“It has been a great privilege to lead GoDaddy and to have grown with the company for almost eight years,” said Scott Wagner, GoDaddy’s Chief Executive Officer. “The Board and I have worked to identify a tremendous successor and lay the groundwork for a smooth transition. Aman brings a wealth of experience to GoDaddy – an extraordinary track record in growing a scaled business, deep expertise in product and engineering and strong delivery across go-to-market. Aman is an exceptional leader, and has created strong followings in every organization he’s led. He will fit in well with GoDaddy’s culture, while drawing upon his comprehensive skills, mindset and experience to lead the company into the future.”

A nine-year veteran of Expedia Group Inc., Bhutani most recently served as the President of Brand Expedia Group, the largest contributor to the company’s 19% annual growth over the last five years. The Brand Expedia Group encompasses the flagship Expedia brand, Travelocity and Orbitz, among others. In his prior role as Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President of Engineering, Bhutani led the vision and development of a single global technology platform designed to support multiple brands and partners, serving 90 million monthly unique visitors and driving more than $50 billion in annual gross bookings value. Under his leadership, Brand Expedia grew revenue healthy double digits through a mixture of organic and inorganic growth. The organic growth strategy was driven by extending the product portfolio, offering more options to travelers, and improving the efficiency and effectiveness of a $1 billion annual performance market spend through automation and machine learning.

Mindtree appoints ex Cognizant executive Debashis Chatterjee as CEO

IT services firm Mindtree Ltd announced the appointment of former Cognizant executive Debashis Chatterjee as its new Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director.

The company also appointed Larsen & Toubro’s (L&T) Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, SN Subrahmanyan, as its non-Executive Vice-Chairman.

“Mindtree, a L&T Group Company announced the appointment of Debashis Chatterjee as the CEO & MD of Mindtree Ltd. He has been inducted into Board of Mindtree Ltd with a mandate to lead the company into its next phase of growth,” Mindtree said in a statement. Prior to joining Mindtree, Chatterjee was President, Global Delivery and Global Leader for the Digital Systems and Technology practice at Cognizant.

Both appointments are effective from 2 August, Mindtree said in a regulatory filing.

L&T’s takeover of Mindtree marked India’s first-ever hostile takeover in the IT space. The infrastructure giant had bought 20.32 per cent shares in Mindtree from late VG Siddhartha and his coffee enterprise for over Rs.3,000 crore in March.

Later, it shored up its holding with more share purchases from the open market, before making an open offer for an additional 31 per cent stake, taking its shareholding to over 60 per cent.

In July, L&T had also secured three board positions at Mindtree, bringing in Subrahmanyan, Jayant Damodar Patil and Ramamurthi Shankar Raman. Shares of Mindtree were trading 0.41 per cent higher at Rs.694 apiece on BSE.

OYO appoints Mandar Vaidya as CEO for SE-Asia, Middle East

Budget hotel chain OYO Hotels and Homes announced the appointment of Mandar Vaidya as the Chief Executive Officer for Southeast Asia and the Middle East. This appointment comes as a part of the company’s focus to drive growth in two of its potential markets - Southeast Asia and the Middle East. The company has already committed over $200 million in investment in Southeast Asia, said the statement.

Vaidya would be responsible for driving business growth for OYO in these two regions, which include markets like Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam, UAE and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the statement added.

“Vaidya has a problem-solving attitude which is necessary as we move towards our goal of transforming the global hospitality landscape. These two markets are crucial to our international expansion strategy and in a brief period of time, we are delivering high-quality accommodation experience to guests in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam, UAE and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” said Ritesh Agarwal, Founder and CEO, OYO Hotels and Homes. Before joining OYO, Vaidya has earlier worked with McKinsey and Co. for 15 years, from 2002 to 2017.