When Ashneer Grover called out double-faced behaviour saying ‘yeh sab doglapan hai’, it became one of the most popular catchphrases of Shark Tank India, and also inspired memes. As his sharp takes on the reality show garnered TRPs, Grover’s popularity at his own firm BharatPe was receding, and he was eventually forced to step down from the board. The entrepreneur and his wife have since been sued by the company for embezzlement and running a viscous campaign against it, but their troubles don’t end there.
Fight getting uglier
BharatPe has also decided to take more from Grover, by filing an arbitration demanding 1.4 per cent of his shares in the startup, which were not vested. Along with the stocks, which are a small part of his 8.5 per cent stake in the online payment platform, BharatPe are also going for his title as a founder. As the battle in public gets dirty, Ashneed Grover has also resorted to taking jibes at his co-founder Shashvat Nakrani, calling him out for his ‘doglapan’ (hypocrisy).
Taking the battle to Twitter
In a tweet posted a day after Grover and his wife got sued for making fake bills and overcharging the firm for recruitment, he wrote about an incident highlighting Nakrani’s two-faced attitude. He shared how Nakrani wanted to complete his studies while drawing a salary and asked Grover to hide it from investors, but didn’t oppose the BharatPe board’s decision to file charges against him.
What’s BharatPe going after?
Vested stocks are shares promised to an employee but the full ownership is only handed over after a set period of time. But Grovers stock that BharatPe is going after, are shares which hadn’t been vested at the time of his resignation from the board. This is in addition to more than Rs 88 crore in damages that the startup is demanding from its former MD and his wife.
