Punit Soni, the ex-Googler and former Flipkart top honcho, has a new ‘favourite startup’, the Innov8 Coworking! Soni, recently announced that he has invested in Innov8 Coworking. However, the exact amount of his investment is not known. Posting on his LinkedIn account, Soni said, “I am super excited to be investing in Innov8 Coworking. These guys have done great work so far and have an incredible future. Along with Razorpay, they are one of my favorite startups in the country. Go kill it guys!!”
Innov8, a sector agnostic co-working space, is one of the three Indian startups to be inducted by Y Combinator in its summer batch. Y Combinator is a famous Silicon Valley incubator. Ritesh Malik, who is the founder of Innov8, sold his startup Alive App to The Bennet & Coleman Group (Times of India) in 2013. According to the Innov8 website, Malik, who is the CEO of the startup, has been instrumental in building of the Make in India thought process. Other co-founders of the startup include Harvard University alumnus Sumit Ranka and IIT alumnus Shailesh Gupta. “Humbled & excited to have @punitsoni on board 🙂 Look forward to working with you sir!” Shailesh Gupta tweeted.
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According to a report in VCCircle, Innov8 plans to open centres in Mumbai and Bengaluru by the end of this year. Innov8 claims to receive 1,000 applications when it opened in October last year, and now houses 50 companies and 150 members, the report said.
Punit Soni quit Flipkart in April this year. He was the Chief Product Officer (CPO) of the Indian e-commerce giant. Soni, a renowned name in the Silicon Valley, is also a former vice-president of product management at Motorola. He was hired by Flipkart in early 2015 to lead product innovation at the e-tailer’s consumer products, marketplace and transaction platform. His role was to drive product strategy, design and product marketing functions to boost Flipkart’s user interface and product solutions.
As a senior product leader with Google and Motorola, Soni was involved in the development of Google News, Google Books, Google Plus, Google Mobile and a suite of Motorola devices, including Moto X, Moto G and Moto E.
