2016: A year that saw quite a few dramatic exits

2016 was undoubtedly a year of many dramatic exits-Globally Brexit continues to be a reality that many Britons are yet to come to terms with. Back at home, Vijay Mallya's hurried midnight exit from the country and Cyrus Mistry's ouster hogged all the limelight. But the most talked-about exit came in the form of the demonetization  which saw a dramatic exit of the old Rs 1000 and Rs 500 currency notes from the Indian economy. The tech industry also had its fair share in it.

Let’s have a look at some of the most talked-about exits of 2016.

Brexit:

Brexit had to be top on our list as Britain’s decision to part ways with EU is something that hasn’t gone down well with many people’s palate and continues to be the most talked about exit of the year.

When the people of Britain voted for the British exit, or Brexit, from the EU in a historic referendum on June 23, it prompted jubilant celebrations among Eurosceptics around the Continent on the one hand and on the other sent shockwaves through the global economy with Britain losing its top AAA credit rating.

With falling Pound and a new Prime Minister things did look grim in the beginning but UK economy appears to have weathered the initial shock of the Brexit vote, although the value of the pound remains near a 30-year low.

Theresa May plans to trigger Article 50 - the step that starts the timer on two years of Brexit talks - by the end of March 2017. If that happens, then Britain would be scheduled to finally leave the EU by March 2019.

As far as Indian tech industry is concerned, the UK being the gateway for the most Indian IT firms to enter Europe, Brexit will create the need for setting up separate headquarters/operations for EU. Besides the movement of skilled workers between EU and UK will also be affected. While it will affect the existing project the large projects may also get delayed due to the lack of clarity on this matter.

Flipkart:

From Sanjay Baweja to Punit Soni to Mukesh Bansal to Ankit Nagori to Peeyush Ranjan, the list looks endless for top-level exits at Flipkart house.

Flipkart CFO Sanjay Baweja quit in October, after nearly a two-year stint at the company. Punit Soni, one of Flipkart's precious Silicon Valley hire, quit as chief product officer in April this year after a year-long stint.

Ankit Nagori quit as Flipkart's chief business officer along with Myntra’s Mukesh Bansal. Later they both started a health and fitness startup CureFit.

CTO Peeyush Ranjan, Manish Maheshwari, Rajinder Sharma, Anand KV, Paroma Chatterjee, Sharat Singh, and Mausam Bhatt are others who bid goodbye to the company following a poor performance in 2015. Besides these exits, India's largest e-commerce marketplace had a series of markdowns from its investors.

Twitter:

Twitter boat seems to have derailed despite all the efforts to bring it back on track. Besides internal feuds, a stagnant user base, the micro-blogging site also witnessed many stranding the boat that’s currently sailing in rough waters.

If globally, longtime Chief Operating Officer, Adam Bain calling it quits was a big blow for Dorsey’s company, back in India, Rishi Jaitly, lackluster Twitter India head and Parminder Singh, managing director of West Asia and north Africa or MENA/Southeast Asia/India putting in their papers have made the road ahead for Twitter really difficult.

The latest to join this list is Ravi Bhaskaran, Head of business development/platform partnerships, South Asia, who has called it quits at Twitter to join Uber India as head of partnerships.

Nikesh Arora:

Nikesh Arora abruptly departed SoftBank Group Corp., two years after he was poached from Google. Arora, who had also emerged as the heir apparent at the Japanese internet and telecommunications giant announced his exit amid mounting criticism from investors over lacklustre investments, with some shareholders having mounted a campaign to oust him, questioning his record.

Arora was quoted as saying that he quit after Mr Son declared he was no longer willing to surrender running the company next year. He said Mr Son had pledged to hand over the reins when he turned 60 but had had second thoughts in recent weeks.

Masa 2 continue 2 be CEO for 5-10 years, respect that. Learnt a lot. Clean chit from board after through review. Time for me to move on.

— Nikesh Arora (@nikesharora) June 21, 2016

Raghuram Rajan:

The news of RBI governor Raghuram Rajan stepping down created ripples not only in India but across global markets. Rajan joined in 2013, September when the country’s economy was fragile, inflation was high, the currency value was dropping daily.

His three-year tenure has seen many ups and downs in terms of macro-challenges, policy choices and managing fiscal and monetary flanks. Despite the criticism, Rajan managed to sustain RBI's credibility at a time when most central bankers were struggling to hold on to theirs.
In the end, the reason for his exit was more political than economic.

Cyrus Mistry:

Another shocking exit of the year was the dramatic ouster of Cyrus Mistry from the Chairman position and Ratan Tata’s temporary takeover of the Tata Sons, worth $103 billion until a successor is selected.

Mistry’s approach of shedding non-profit businesses, including the conglomerate’s steel business in Europe and concentrating only on cash cows irked the company leadership.

Shapoorji and Pallonji Group, the majority shareholder in the Tata Group, has termed Cyrus Mistry's ouster from Tata Sons as illegal. Mistry is the son of Pallonji Mistry, who heads the group. The group says it will contest the move, adding that the decision to remove Mistry was not unanimous.