BharatPe co-founder to go on leave till March after legal tangle

Ashneer Grover, co-founder of fintech unicorn BharatPe, has announced his decision to take a voluntary leave of absence from the company till the end of March.

BharatPe co-founder and managing director Ashneer Grover / Photo credit: BharatPe

The announcement comes after his legal tangle with Kotak Mahindra Bank, one of India’s largest private lenders. The bank said it had planned to take legal action against Grover and his wife, Madhuri, after the BharatPe co-founder allegedly hurled abuses to one of the bank’s employees.

The dispute began earlier this month after an audio clip was leaked, where Grover was allegedly threatening a Kotak employee for failing to get the couple shares in FSN E-Commerce Ventures, the parent company of cosmetics retailer Nykaa, after its listing in November 2021. The share allotment was worth over US$67 million.

However, the BharatPe co-founder denied the authenticity of the audio clip.

Grover had also worked with the Kotak group for over seven years as its chief financial officer, prior to his stint at Grofers (now BlinkIt). He started building BharatPe in 2018.

“The Board has accepted Ashneer’s decision which we agree is in the best interests of the company, our employees and investors, and the millions of merchants we support each day,” BharatPe said in a statement.

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Meanwhile, there have been tweets doing the rounds that Tiger Global and Beenext have sought an emergency meeting with the company after the Kotak-related dispute came to light.

Recently, a report from The Economic Times said that Grover also had a spat with Harshjit Sethi, managing director of Sequoia Capital India, in August 2020. The report said that Grover reportedly used expletives during the conversation with the executive after Sequoia decided not to participate in BharatPe’s series B round. In July 2021, Sethi became the managing director of the venture team at Sequoia India.

Notably, Sequoia Capital is the largest shareholder of BharatPe, holding a 19.6% stake in the company.