Educational Initiatives, Ixigo appoint top rung executives

Edtech platform Educational Initiatives appointed Pranav Kothari as its chief executive officer, replacing co-founder Srini Raghavan who will move to the role of chief mentor and continue on the board.  

Kothari, who has been with the company for over a decade, has been involved with the education programme division, adaptive learning product Mindspark, and has been the head of HR, the company said. 

Having studied at Harvard Business School, Kothari has worked at GTI Capital and the Boston Consulting Group. 

Educational Initiatives was founded in 2001 by Sridhar Rajagopalan, Sudhir Ghodke and Venkat Krishnan. It develops and offers education assessment and learning products and services for schools in India and abroad. 

ixigo

ixigo, an artificial intelligence-based travel platform, appointed Ravi Shanker Gupta as its chief financial officer. Gupta joins from Devyani Food Street Pvt Ltd, where he led the company’s financial operations. 

Prior to Devyani Food, Gupta had a 14-year stint at Jubilant FoodWorks with his last held position at the firm being president and finance chief.  

“We are confident that Gupta will be a strong addition to our leadership team and will bring a wealth of financial and strategic leadership experience to ixigo,” said chief executive Aloke Bajpai and tech chief Rajnish Kumar.  

ixigo was set up in 2007. The Gurugram-based company says its platform applies artificial intelligence (AI) for personalised recommendations and deal discovery, airfare predictions, train delay information, and customer service.  

Earlier in the year, ixigo acquired train discovery and booking entity Confirmtkt in a cash and stock deal.