Patel was working as Chief Product Officer.
By Raif Karerat
WASHINGTON, DC: As part of a slew of sweeping changes at Lendingtree Inc., the Charlotte-based online loan marketplace, the company announced Nikul Patel will be promoted from chief product officer to chief operating officer.
According to the Charlotte Business Journal, moving forward Patel will be responsible for the day-to-day business operations for the lending businesses on top of his product and technology responsibilities.
Prior to joining Lendingtree, Patel served as president of Lendage.com, an online mortgage business. He was also chief operating officer and vice president of products at Home-Account.com, where his LinkedIn page describes how he “worked with a team of entrepreneurs and raised funding from VCs to change the online mortgage shopping experience.”
Furthermore, Patel served as strategic business development manager for Intel for more than a decade, where he was responsible for originating investment opportunities in the software sector.
According to Bloomberg Business, Patel has an MBA with honors in Finance from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and completed his undergraduate studies at Gujarat University in India, where he earned a BS in electronics and communication engineering.
Other changes will see Gabe Dalporto, who joined the company in April 2011 as CMO assume a new role as Chief Financial Officer, while Paul Onnen will join the company as chief technology officer and Neil Salvage will fill the newly created role of Chief Revenue Officer.
The executive-level shakeup is an effort by Lendingtree to explore new growth opportunities, according to the Charlotte Business Journal.
“LendingTree has experienced a tremendous amount of growth, but we still have a huge opportunity ahead of us,” founder and CEO Doug Lebda said in a statement to the Charlotte Business Journal. “We needed to re-imagine the relationship between business operations, analytics and finance.”
LendingTree’s 2014 revenue totaled $167.4 million, up from $139.2 million in the previous year. The company earned $9.4 million in 2014, leaping from $3.9 million in 2013.