Promod Haque, senior managing partner at venture capital fund Norwest Venture Partners, has resigned from the board of directors of Nasdaq-listed Yatra Online Inc, which runs travel portal Yatra.com.
Haque has been a non-executive member of Yatra’s board since July 2006.
"Haque informed the company that his decision to resign from the board of directors did not result from a disagreement with Yatra on any matter relating to the firm’s operations, policies or practices," Yatra said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Yatra co-founder and CEO Dhruv Shringi said, "Promod saw Yatra grow from just an idea to the second-largest OTA in India. We have mutually agreed this is the right time for him to step down given the demands on his time," Shringi said.
The firm said it is searching for a replacement for Haque.
It is not clear whether Norwest is also looking to exit the company.
An email query sent to Norwest did not elicit any response till the time of filing this report.
Haque has been with Norwest since 1990, and has led investments in more than 70 companies—his investments have been worth more than $40 billion in aggregate exit value to date. Twenty-five of his portfolio companies have gone public and 37 have been acquired.
In July last year, Yatra had inked a reverse-merger agreement with US-based Nasdaq-listed special purpose acquisition form Terrapin 3 Acquisition Corp, paving the way for a back-door listing of the second Indian online travel agency in the US after rival MakeMyTrip.
Yatra was founded in 2006 by former Ebookers Group (UK) executives Shringi, Manish Amin and Sabina Chopra. The company posted a 33.8% jump in net revenue for the quarter ended 30 June 2017. Revenue after excluding service costs in the April-June quarter increased to Rs 163.44 crore from Rs 122.16 crore a year earlier. The online travel services provider posted an adjusted an earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) loss of Rs 61 crore compared with a profit of Rs 1.3 crore a year earlier.
