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Basab Pradhan Quits Gridstone Research As CEO Amidst Downturn

By TEAM VCC

  • 10 Mar 2009

Basab Pradhan has quit as the CEO of financial research platform company Gridstone Research. His colleague and co-founder P R Ganapathy has taken over as the CEO from March 10. Gridstone, founded by Pradhan, Ganapathy and others, has been funded by venture capital investors such as Helion Venture Partners, Charles River and Maverick Capital.

Before founding Gridstone, Pradhan was the global sales head for Infosys Technologies. Gridstone was founded in 2005.

Pradhan's exit seems to have coincided with the severe downturn the global financial industry is going through. Most of the clients of Gridstone have slashed their spending and are in fact fighting for survival.

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Pradhan himself writes: "Gridstone’s market, the investment managment industry, has been going through one of its worse downturns ever. Needless to say, budgets have been slashed and Gridstone had to take cost-reduction measures to adjust to the new reality."

Pradhan continues: "A few weeks back I started feeling that my presence was no longer necessary for the company and that the rest of the management team was strong enough to carry on with the good work without me. I asked the board to relieve me of my duties as CEO."

Pradhan will continue to be a board member of the company. Pradhan's next move is not known. Writing about his exit in his blog, Pradhan said that he would not be rushing into anything soon.  

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"I don’t have any well laid out plans of what I am going to do next. The only thing I know is that I am going to take my time. There is no reason to rush into anything and every reason to make a careful, considered decision. The last few years have been entirely focused on the capital markets. I need to reconnect with what’s happening in other industries, in the US and in India. So the first thing I am going to do is meet people who are in the flow of what’s going on.There’s nothing like a conversation with a smart businessman to clear out the cobwebs," he said.

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