Nikhil Rungta, the Senior Vice President - Marketing of Reliance Jio, has quit the company to join SoftBank-backed realty portal, Housing.com, as its Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). Rungta’s departure is among the high-profile exits from Mukesh-Ambani-owned Reliance Jio, which is preparing to start commercial operations in the country. Sandeep Das and Sumit Chowdhury are some of the high-profile executives who left Jio earlier this year.
Rungta served Jio for over 20 months and helped it build a digital services brand using mix of Traditional and Digital Marketing. Having over 20 years of experience, Rungta also led marketing for trial of Jio products and services amongst employees and with customers at big ticket events like IPL, besides helping the company launch Jio Chat – an OTT messaging app.
Prior to Jio, he played key business leadership roles at start-ups like Yebhi and Yatra.com. He was the first CMO for Google in India, where he held that position for four years.Rungta’s appointment is aimed at strengthening the top management team at Housing.com. "For the last two decades, he has worked in leadership roles across sales, marketing and e-commerce with both multinationals and start-ups,”Housing.com Chief Business Officer (CBO) Jason Kothari, said on Rungta's appointment.
"He has a deep understanding of the Indian consumer market and has used a mix of traditional marketing and digital media to grow world-class businesses and brands from the ground up," Kothari added.
Housing.com has been on a hiring spree this year. It has made several appointments at senior level after its board sacked co-founder and then CEO Rahul Yadav. The start-up appointed Rishabh Gupta as interim CEO in July, followed by Jason Kothari’s appointment as the Chief Business Officer in August. Housing.com also roped in Keerthi Kiran and Mani Rangarajan as Vice President, New Real Estate Projects, and Chief Financial Officer (CFO), respectively.
