From Ezetap to WhatsApp: The story of a founder’s exit

To leave a company one co-founded for a top job at a leading tech company is a tricky thing. Does Abhijit Bose’s departure herald a new phase in the Indian startup world?

Ezetap raised $51 million to take payments to millions of merchants, and its founder leaving it midway for a better opportunity sends mixed signals externally

Abhijit Bose says the only reason he is quitting Ezetap is because WhatsApp is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity

Blue-blooded investors like Chamath Palihapitiya saw Ezetap as the coming together of superstar businesses like Stripe, AWS and Android

Ezetap though still has a lot of growing up to do

In what is already a tumultuous journey, founders leaving the companies they started are events that inevitably shake up startups. And the reason they choose to leave also says a lot about the state of the company. Based on why a founder chooses to go, one could say he or she pulled:

A ‘Travis Kalanick’ or a ‘Binny Bansal’: When a founder has been found guilty of misconduct as in the case of the Uber CEO or the Flipkart CEO

A ‘Jack Dorsey’: For non-performance, like when the Twitter CEO was fired in 2008 for spending too much time on his hobbies (he re-joined the company three years later as executive chairman) rather than running the company

An ‘Elizabeth Holmes’: A founder whose string of lies and web of fraud gets discovered, leading to their resignation, much like the Theranos CEO.

AUTHOR

Arundhati Ramanathan

Arundhati is Bengaluru-based. She is interested in how people use money in the digital age and how new economies will take shape based on that interaction. She has spent over 10 years reporting and writing on various subjects. Previous stints were at Mint, Outlook Business and Reuters.

View Full Profile

Others tell you what. We tell you the ‘So What?’

Read articles that decode the most significant shifts happening around business, technology, startups and healthcare. 1000+ articles for subscribers of the India edition. 150+ articles for subscribers of the Southeast Asia edition. Plus premium newsletters that help you make sense of the world around you.

So much journalism in India is superficial.

Articles are generic, almost cookie-cutter in their approach. And they don’t provide enough context on the issues they cover. The Ken is different. I don’t always agree with everything they say but I appreciate their commitment to publishing deeply reported narratives and investigations. Their reporters find new ways to analyze tech among other industries. And that’s always worth a read.

Sid Talwar / Co-Founder and Partner / Lightbox Venture Capital

As entrepreneurs, we thrive on being in the know at all times.

A personal subscription to The Ken was a no brainer. But as startup founders, this isn't enough. Team members also need to be in the know, for everyone handles customer-facing responsibilities and an ecosystem change that impacts customers also impacts us

Kiran Jonnalagadda / Co-founder / HasGeek and Internet Freedom Foundation