eBay India has a 'mafia' all its own? Check out these movers and shakers

In India, unicorn start-ups like InMobi and Flipkart take credit for their own ‘mafia’, having inspired many employees to start up themselves. However, there is another such group in India that has not been talked about a lot - eBay.

Despite its success in over 30 countries, eBay, whose India arm was bought out by Flipkart a year ago, has shut down its India operations. The company, though, has inspired a bunch of employees to start up - and a few of them have become prominent names in the Indian startup ecosystem.

Sanjay Sethi: ShopClues co-founder and CEO was senior director (Products) at eBay in California for seven years (from 2004). He was instrumental in setting up eBay’s India office too. An Alumnus of IIT-Delhi and Varanasi, Sanjay co-founded online commerce platform ShopClues with Sandeep Aggarwal and Radhika Ghai in 2011. Backed by Tiger Global Management, Nexus Venture Partners, and Helion Venture Partners, among others, ShopClues became a unicorn in early 2016.

Ambareesh Murty and Ashish Shah: Pepperfry co-founders Ambareesh Murty (CEO) and Ashish Shah (COO) met at eBay. Ashish was heading sales and operations when he joined eBay in 2002 (as part of Baazee) and went on to become the business head of eBay Motors in India and the Philippines. Ambareesh was his boss, as the country manager for India, the Philippines, and Malaysia. The duo’s eBay connection does not end there. Niren Shah, who was earlier in charge of eBay’s worldwide strategy, was Norwest Venture Partners’ India MD when it invested in Pepperfry in the start-up’s initial days.

Suchi Mukherjee: The co-founder of online fashion commerce portal Limeroad, Suchi Mukherjee is an alumnus of top educational institutions like St Stephen’s College, University of Cambridge, and London School of Economics. She was heading business seller programmes for a year at eBay UK for a year, after which she led eBay-owned companies Skype and Gumtree in the UK. In 2011, she founded Limeroad, which has raised $50 million from investors Tiger Global Management, Matrix Partners and Lightspeed Ventures.

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Upasana Taku: Mobikwik co-founder Upasana Taku has donned multiple hats before she started up in 2010. The NIT Jalandhar graduate, who has an MBA from Stanford University, was a senior product manager at eBay-owned PayPal in San Francisco for around three years. She was also the director of online payment company Zaakpay in India, before launching Mobikwik, backed by Sequoia and Mediatek, among others. 

By Athira Nair
(YourStory.com)