(Bloomberg) -- Confluent Inc.’s global head of sales has left the company as it works to transition its sales model to one that’s tailored for cloud services and based on consumption pricing.
Hemanth Vedagarbha left the company this month, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly.
The California-based company is working on expanding its cloud-based offering and has been changing its sales organization to reflect that strategy, said Chief Executive Officer Jay Kreps during a March investor event. Confluent offers software for organizing and accessing data from multiple sources. Like many peers, its revenue growth has slowed in recent quarters.
Sellers’ incentive compensation is now based on customer use of products, rather than when deals are booked, Kreps said during the March event. The previous model was “a little out of step with where the market was,” he added.
Confluent declined to comment. Vedagarbha did not respond to request for comment.
The shares declined 2.7% to $27.12 at 1 p.m. Wednesday in New York. The stock had gained 19% this year through Tuesday’s close, outpacing the iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF.
Vedagarbha had been at the company for four years and reported to President of Field Operations Erica Schultz. Before Confluent, he spent nearly two decades at Oracle Corp., according to his LinkedIn profile.
His departure may suggest sales execution issues as enterprises tighten their IT budgets, said Bloomberg Intelligence’s Sunil Rajgopal. It may add to uncertainty around Confluent’s growth rates in coming quarters, he added.
(Updates with share movement in the sixth paragraph. An earlier version corrected the spelling of the analyst’s name.)
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