Excl: Three of the five original team of startup incubator The Hatch quit

Three of the five original team of startup accelerator-cum-incubator The Hatch have quit the organisation leaving the outfit to husband-wife duo Puneet Vatsayan and Anupama Arya and a few other mentors, sources privy to the information told Techcircle.in.

Sources said, co-founder Prajakt Raut along with mentors Sanjay Bansal and Prashant K Gulati have quit the organisation recently due to "operational issues and lack of communication" with the two founding directors.

The accelerator was formed by Puneet Vatsayan and Anupama Arya in March 2012 as founding directors. P K Gulati, Prajakt Raut and Sanjay Bansal joined the duo as mentors, while Raut became the co-founder and operations in-charge in early 2012.

When contacted by Techcircle.in, Raut confirmed that he has moved on but declined to comment further.

Founder Anupama Arya too confirmed the development: "It does impact when people from the core team move, but we are still operational and continue to help startups. Me and my husband (Puneet Vatsayan) are running the incubator," she said. She also clarified in an email that "the presumption of 'operations going slow' are incorrect".

Arya also denied that there were five founders. It is "completely incorrect", she said in an email.

"At no point was any other person made a founder of Hatch nor did they make investments or owned any equity in the firm in any manner," Arya said in the email.

However, Techcircle could see the mention of Raut as a co-founder on The Hatch website which has been taken down since April 22nd (see link).

Arya mentioned that going forward The Hatch will be adding more portfolio companies and it is also looking to launch a dedicated early stage fund.

She said the accelerator has 26 companies in its portfolio at present. A few companies in its portfolio include Postergully, Tune Patrol, Allschoolstuff, Mera Gaon Power, ChekMeIn, I-Dream and Scooze among others.

Vatsayan and Arya are co-founders of Mobera Systems Pvt Ltd, a contract research and development company focused on communication, networking, wireless and embedded technologies. Both worked at Silicon Valley before moving to India.

Note: Please note the article has been updated multiple times after it was originally published on Friday, April 26.

Also Read: Start-up Incubator Hatch To Open Centres In Six Cities