The boardroom battle that has played out over the last two months in one BharatPe has been anything but friendly with allegations and counter-allegations.
Even though the results of an internal investigation against co-founder Ashneer Grover and his wife, Madhuri Jain Grover, are still awaited, Grover has resigned from one of the company’s directors and the Managing Director.
This comes before a board meeting slated to take place in the first week of March, where the board sought Grover’s presence.
In his two-page long resignation letter to the Board, Grover has hit out at the company’s investors and alleged that the Investor-founder relation in India is one of master-slave. Grover wrote, “You treat us founders as slaves pushing us to build multi-billion-dollar businesses and cutting us down at will.”
Grover also alleged that the investors did not take an active interest in the company and did not even attend the inauguration of the company’s new office.
He named Micky Malka of Ribbit Capital, Harshjit Sethi of Sequoia, Teruhide Sato of Beenext, Rahul Vijay Kishore of Coatue, and Deven Parekh of Insight Partners in the letter.
Grover has recently found himself on the opposite side of the board, key investors, and his co-founders. In his resignation letter, he emphasised that he was forced to leave.
His wife, Madhuri Jain Grover, was also removed from the company after it was alleged that she used the company’s fund for her beauty treatments and bought electronic devices for personal use.
Reacting to his resignation, a BharatPe spokesperson said that Grover had resigned as managing director and board director of BharatPe minutes after receiving the agenda for an upcoming board meeting that included submission of the PwC report regarding his conduct and considering actions based on it.
It was also mentioned that the company reserves the right to take any necessary legal action against Ashneer Grover based on the report’s finding.
The resignation comes after the Singapore International Arbitration Centre (SIAC) has refused to grant emergency relief to Grover from a governance review into financial mismanagement being conducted by the company.
