Startups such as Navi Technologies, Angel One, Snapdeal, Livspace, Mobikwik, Dunzo, PharmEasy, Leap, and MyGate were among those that reshuffled their top brass this year. The list also includes three startups that recently went public or are part of large groups, such as EaseMyTrip, Haptik, Paytm Payments Bank, Mobikwik and PaisaBazaar.<\/p>\n
CEOs appointed in H1 2025<\/p>\n
Among these, 14 startups appointed new CEOs from other startups in the first half of 2025. Stockbroking firm Angel One named Ambarish Kenghe<\/a> as Group CEO in January; he previously served as Vice President and General Manager at Google Pay APAC. B2B e-commerce unicorn Zetwerk appointed Vadim Yakubov as CEO of its US subsidiary, Unimact. Meanwhile, Snapdeal brought in Achint Setia<\/a> as CEO, and co-working space provider Table Space announced Karan Chopra and Kunal Mehra as Co-CEOs.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, 9 startups promoted existing executives or co-founders to CEO roles. Navi\u2019s early team members Rajiv Naresh and Abhishek Dwivedi<\/a> became CEOs of Navi Technologies and Navi Finserv, respectively. Home decor company Livspace elevated its co-founder and COO Ramakant Sharma to the role of CEO after former CEO Anuj Srivastava has transitioned to the role of chairman of the board. CARS24, EaseMyTrip, Paisabazaar, OYO, Bolt.Earth and Polygon also promoted their existing executives to the top position.<\/p>\n Elevated co-founders in H1 2025<\/p>\n Around eight startups have promoted key executives to the position of co-founder in recognition of their pivotal contributions to the company\u2019s growth. Deep-tech startup Enlog elevated its CTO Ayush Gupta<\/a> to co-founder, while B2B marketplace ProcMart promoted its CFO and CSO Sachin Jain<\/a> to the same role. Edtech startup Masai named three internal leaders Keshav Misra, Aman Vats and Ankit Agarwal as co-founders. Increff, Presentations.ai, Leap, GyanDhan and MyGate also elevated senior executives to co-founder positions for playing a crucial role in shaping the companies\u2019 journeys.<\/p>\n Co-founders who stepped down<\/p>\n Apart from new appointments and elevations, some startups also witnessed their co-founders exiting the firm during the first six months of 2025. Some notable names include, BluSmart founders Anmol Singh Jaggi and Puneet Singh Jaggi have exited the company after a fraud case surfaced against them in their promoter firm, Gensol Engineering. Their departure comes amid growing scrutiny over the allegations.<\/p>\n Online pharmacy Pharmeasy\u2019s three co-founders, Dharmil Sheth, Dhaval Shah and Hardik Dedhia<\/a>, have stepped back from the Bengaluru-based firm. Romil Jain<\/a>, co-founder and former Chief Technology Officer of SaaS startup Increff, has also exited the company. Lizzie Chapman, co-founder of Swiffy Labs, stepped down from her role after founding the company in August 2023 following the closure of her previous venture ZestMoney. The list also includes co-founders from hyperlocal delivery service Dunzo, Log9 Materials, and Clensta.<\/p>\n While there are the obvious exits where startups have floundered, what is good to see is how many startups have seen changes to accommodate professionals who have made an impact. Firms going public, or after going public usually see changes as the new reality of higher scrutiny and compliances is too onerous for a lot of founders. The churn at startup corner offices is a positive pointer also of how family owned businesses in India could plan transitions, where the next generation is not as keen on the business. One still has mixed feelings about elevating professionals\u00a0 to co-founder designations, as there is nothing quite like the risk and narrative of actual founders taking the first plunge.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Leadership churn across Indian startups has picked up pace in 2025, with the first six months alone witnessing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12652,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[45,49,48,3698,11914,137,2146],"class_list":{"0":"post-12651","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entrepreneurship","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-ceo","12":"tag-co-founder","13":"tag-entrepreneurship","14":"tag-startup"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12651\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Notable](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/notable-ceos-2025-07-21-14-26-21.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"Elevated\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/elevated-2025-07-21-10-18-47.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"Stepped](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/stepped-down-2025-07-21-14-40-42.png\")
<\/p>\n