Nikesh Arora has left Japan-based internet and telecommunications group SoftBank, where he spearheaded its corporate venturing strategy as company president and chief operating officer.
Arora joined SoftBank in late 2014 from Google where he served as chief business officer, and had directed SoftBank, a significant corporate venturing participant, to lean more towards larger investments, notably in his home country of India.
Arora described that strategy to Recode last year, explaining: “As we look at the future for the next tens of years, we believe that the way to preserve the long-term sustainability of SoftBank is to be large minority shareholders of many assets.
“We believe that it is less crowded in the large-cheque marketplace…and it is a smaller universe of companies we have to understand and support.”
The executive had been handpicked to succeed SoftBank chief executive Masayoshi Son as head of the company in the next two or three years, but Son decided recently he would stay on for five to 10 years and Arora said on Twitter that development had led to his departure.
However, the Wall Street Journal reports that Arora’s departure could have also been influenced by investor dissatisfaction with the reportedly underwhelming performance of some of SoftBank’s larger recent investments, though Arora has called their complaints groundless.
Arora departs as SoftBank agreed to divest its majority stake in mobile game producer Supercell to China-based internet company Tencent at a big profit. SoftBank paid about $1.5bn for a 51% stake in 2013 before upping its stake to 73% in June 2015, and the acquisition will net SoftBank about $7bn.
Arora will be succeeded as president and COO by Ken Miyauchi, who had led its domestic telecom and mobile operations.
– Photo of Nikesh Arora courtesy of Twitter