Rajan Anandan-backed dating site StepOut hires former Games2win exec Raj Menon as COO

Rajan Anandan-backed dating site StepOut, earlier called Ignighter, has brought on board Raj Menon as Chief Operating Officer.

Till recently, Menon was director, business, at Games2win. In fact he has been in the Games2win  group for 12 years in various capacities and was part of core team that incubated and set up several group companies such as Mobile2win, Media2win, Koimoi.com and Games2win.

Speaking to Techcircle.in, Menon said, "Right now our focus is India and hence my mandate is to grow the company and make money and considerable traction."

In another development, Umesh Choori has also joined StepOut as VP, marketing and analytics. Earlier, Choori was director- business analytics at web.com responsible for driving new business through analytics. He will be responsible for all aspects of marketing including Search engine optimization (SEO), Search engine marketing (SEM) , e-mail, PR, affiliates, partnerships and social media.

To be based in Mumbai, both of them will be report to Adam Sachs, who has also recently shifted to India's commercial capital.

A recipient of the American Web Analytics Association national championship, Choori obtained an engineering degree from IIT Kharagpur, MS from University of Oklahoma and an MBA from Ross of Business School at the University Michigan.

Ignighter entered India in 2011 got rebranded as StepOut early this year to fit into the niche between matrimonial sites and social networking, offering young Internet users an online platform for organising informal meets in the real world, where they can decide whom to date. In June 2011 Ignighter.com, had appointed Tarun Davda as its VP and Country Head for India, left the company to join Matrix Partners as vice President, Internet Investments.

This group dating site also raised $3 million in funding from a group of high profile investors including Indian Angels Networks' Rajan Anandan (head of Google India), Sasha Mirchandani (one of the founding members of Mumbai Angels and Managing Director, BRV India) and Sunjay Guleria (CEO of Exclusively.in).

(Edited by Prem Udayabhanu)