Pepperfry co-founder Ambareesh Murty dies of cardiac arrest in Leh

Pepperfry Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Ambareesh Vedantam Murty passed away in Leh on Monday night after a cardiac arrest.

Ashish Shah, co-founder of the omnichannel furniture retailer, tweeted: "Extremely devastated to inform that my friend, mentor, brother, soulmate @AmbareeshMurty is no more. Lost him yesterday night to a cardiac arrest at Leh. Please pray for him and for strength to his family and near ones."

In June 1996, Murty started his career as a sales and marketing professional in Cadbury.

After working with the company for nearly six years, Murty joined Prudential ICICI AMC (now ICICI Prudential) as vice-president of marketing and customer service.

After this, he worked with Levi's for five months and then started his venture, Origin Resources, which according to Murty, "helped train financial advisors and channel intermediaries, and help set up advisor networks by providing turnkey advisor acquisition, training, and empanelment solutions to Indian Mutual Funds."

He closed the startup in 2005 and joined Britannia as a marketing manager. After working with Britannia for nearly seven months, Murty joined eBay India, where he was the country manager for the Philippines, Malaysia, and India.

In June 2011, Murty started Pepperfry — an online marketplace for selling home furniture and more — along with Ashish Shah. The startup became one of the leading online furniture retailers at the time.

Over the past decade, Pepperfry has had an in-house supply chain and has a presence across over 100 cities across India.

Ambareesh had done Bachelor of Engineering (B.E.) from the Delhi College of Engineering and Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Calcutta.