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MUMBAI: Rahul Yadav , co-founder & CEO of Housing.com, announced at a company town hall held in a suburban hotel in Mumbai that he is allotting all his shares to employees of the realty portal, in what comes across as an unprecedented move by a company founder and leaves him with no skin in the game. Yadav held around 4.5% stake in Housing, once touted as the hottest campus startup to have emerged out of IIT-Bombay, but which is now marred by controversies.Known for having an abrasive demeanour, Yadav said in a written statement, “I’m just 26 and it’s too early in life to get serious about money,” which is why he was relinquishing his entire stake in Housing. People present at the town hall told TOI that most employees were shocked with the sudden announcement.A press statement sent out late Wednesday evening said, “Rahul Yadav, CEO of Housing, took everyone by surprise when he announced that he has allotted his personal shares worth Rs 150-200 crore to all the 2,251 employees of Housing who will get approximately one year of their annual salaries worth of company stocks.”Yadav holds the highest shares among the founding team, which is now down to nine members from 12 when Housing began operations in 2012. Besides the 4.5% that Yadav holds, the rest of the founders together own about 8-9% in the realty portal. The ESOP pool at Housing had reached abysmally low levels at about 2% due to back-to-back funding rounds which led to talks among investors and founders to shed some of their stakes to lure talent and motivate employees in the company.Yadav had put in his resignation on April 30 from the CEO’s role, which he subsequently withdrew at a company board meeting last week. In fact, he went on to apologize for his unseemly comments made in the letter against Housing’s investors. SoftBank is the startup’s largest shareholder with about a 32% stake with its early investor Nexus Venture Partners holding around 19% in the company.The Japanese telecom and internet giant is seen to have taken the reins of Housing by setting up a five-member committee headed by SoftBank’s representative on the board, Jonathan Bullock. Further explaining his stance, Yadav said in a written statement, “We want to unify all and create a global giant for real estate so that the company can afford much higher level of R&D and technological innovation to push the category forward. Other than these two, there is no other factor at play here, including money.”Started by 12 IIT-Bombay graduates, Housing is a map-based real estate portal which helps people rent, sell and buy houses. Besides, SoftBank and Nexus Venture Partners, its other investors include Helion Venture Partners, Qualcomm Ventures and Falcon Edge. It has raised $140 million in all and rose to prominence as a startup, which was disrupting the old guard of online real estate listings. SoftBank led a $90-million round in the company, valuing it at about $250 million then.While Yadav is celebrated in the startup world for having created one of the finest tech products in Housing, the business has not been able to scale up, which is the reason for the continued pressure from investors to replace him and get a professional CEO in. Housing, which is burning millions of dollars, received flak for spending more than Rs 100 crore on an ad blitzkrieg around its new campaign ‘Look Up’. Investors have also been opposed to the proposed acquisition of PropEquity, which Yadav had been pushing for.Yadav was previously embroiled in a social media spat with Shailendra Singh , MD of VC firm Sequoia India, having written a brusque email to him which went viral and later with The Times Group, which publishes this paper. Housing competes with the likes of 99acres, MagicBricks, part of the Times Group which publishes this paper, and new age startups like Bangalore-based Common floor.