Lodha comes in place of Vivek Tiwari, the company’s cofounder who stepped down from the CEO’s position in the backdrop of the company facing allegations of financial discrepancies.
On July 9, ET was the first to report about the Mumbai-based company undergoing a management reshuffle, with Tiwari taking on a board role amid a financial audit.
The financial audit of the Creaegis-backed company was conducted by PwC. It is believed to have found discrepancies in Medikabazaar’s revenue recognition process, among other issues.
Tiwari had started Medikabazaar in 2014 along with Ketan Malkan. Malkan was the company’s chief financial officer until July 2023. Since then, he has transitioned to a board role. Malkan was replaced by Raman Chawla–former top finance executive at companies such as Campus Activewear and Reckitt Benckiser–as Medikabazaar’s CFO.
Medikabazaar, last valued at $650 million, had appointed former Jet Airways CFO Ravishankar Gopalakrishnan as group chief operating officer and whole-time director in April.
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In May, Gopalakrishnan and Chawla were appointed on the board of directors of the company, according to information sourced from the corporate affairs ministry.The other directors on Medikabazaar’s board are representatives of the company’s investors Creaegis, Ackermans & van Haaren and HealthQuad.
Lodha, the newly appointed group CEO, has experience in managing B2B and B2C operations in the FMCG and healthcare segments of multinational and private equity-led companies, Medikabazaar said in a statement. This includes Healthium, TI Medical, GE Healthcare and Samsung.
Lodha said, “The company is at an inflection point, and I see substantial opportunities across the verticals we operate in. We will continue strengthening our collaborations with leading hospitals and healthcare professionals globally, serving as an extended procurement arm for all their medical procurement.”
TI Medical is a joint venture between listed engineering firm Tube Investments and Premji Invest, the family office of Wipro founder Azim Premji.