Private equity firm True North-backed Cloudnine Hospitals said on Thursday it has appointed Raviganesh Venkataraman, a former executive at telecom services provider Bharti Airtel Ltd, as its chief executive officer.
Venkataraman replaces Akash Malik, who had been with the company for six years, Cloudnine said in a statement. Malik will pursue other entrepreneurial opportunities beyond healthcare, it added.
In his new role, Venkataraman will be responsible for driving the company's corporate strategy, business developments, mergers and acquisition, systems and policies across the company.
Venkataraman, who has over 25 years of experience, was until recently a director on the board of German wholesaler Metro AG's Indian arm Metro Cash & Carry India. He was earlier chief operating officer and business head at Bharti Airtel. He has also worked with Coca Cola India and Titan Industries in the past.
Rohit MA, co-founder and managing director at Cloudnine, said Venkataram's non-healthcare background won’t be a disadvantage for the hospital chain. “Today's fluid, dynamic employment market career paths are no longer linear,” he said, adding that the appointment has remained true to bringing in the best performers from a non-healthcare industry across managerial positions to help push the possibilities within healthcare.
The top management change at Cloudnine comes at a time when the company is in the midst of a large fundraise.
Last year, VCCircle reported that Cloudnine Hospitals received fresh private equity funding and mandated an investment bank to arrange a larger round that could be a precursor to a public issue.
In fact, Cloudnine has been looking to raise a large funding round for quite some time. In February 2017, Cloudnine had said that Matrix Partners had decided to sell its stake in the company and that it had mandated investment bank Spark Capital for a larger funding round to facilitate the exit.
Matrix Partners had initially invested $9.95 million in Cloudnine in 2011, and later put more money along with Sequoia Capital in 2013 and 2015. It made a partial exit in December 2015 when True North invested Rs 400 crore in Cloudnine.
The company, which was founded in 2007, is present in over 20 locations across seven cities: Bengaluru, Chennai, Mumbai, Pune, Gurugram, Noida and Chandigarh.