Why the recent Executive Staff Exodus at Cars45? Hmm…seems familiar

There has been a recent silent executive mass exodus in Nigeria’s leading automotive trading platform, Cars45 that seems to signify that there is a discord among the senior executives at the top and the board in the company.

If it had not been for the report from Weetracker, not many people would have known that the CEO/co-founder Etop Ikpe and eleven senior executives have left the company. In fact, Etop Ikpe who served as the CEO since its launch in 2016, left the company two months ago.

Then came the disclaimer on the company’s Instagram handle that notified the public of eleven senior executives that were no longer in the employment of the company with effect from August 25, 2020. The public notice went on to add that “They are not authorised to represent the company in any matters whatsoever.

The individuals include Mohammed Iyamu – Co-founder/VP Trading; Jide Adamolekun – CFO; Mayokun Fadeyibi – VP Commercial; Timi Tope Ologunoye – Director Corporate Services; Chetan Seth – Director of Technology; John Egwu – VP, Supply Chain and others in the now deleted Cars45 Instagram post (shown below)

The mass exodus of these senior executives would suggest that there was a fallout between the Board members and the executive team.

Cars45 was founded in 2016 by Etop Ikpe, Iyamu Mohammed, Sujay Tyle, and Peter Lindholm. In 2017, the company raised a $5 million Series A round from the Frontier Cars Group, a holding company whose backers include Balderton Capital,  EchoVC, TPG Growth, and NEA.

Frontiers Cars Group, co-founded by Sujay Tyle, raised $58 million in funding in 2018 and got $400 million in 2019 from Naspers’ OLX. It is interesting to note that Sujay Tyle quit FCG in August 2020.

With Sujay gone, what may have happened is that there was a change in strategic direction. He may have been preaching to continue investing in Africa with the launch of Cars45 in Kenya in 2019 but with the history of an investor like Naspers (or Prosus) and their strategy to divest from Africa, there might have been a disagreement. Naspers divested from Careers24, Bounce News and OLX in Africa last year.

It is not yet confirmed why the executives left or whether they had nice parting gifts but it sure smells like they were rewarded to leave silently. Hmm…isn’t this familiar? What will become of Cars45 in the near future?

We have however reached out to Cars45 officially for a response. So we are waiting…..