BharatPe Co-Founder on Leave: Digital payments firm BharatPe in a statement issued on Wednesday, January 19, announced that the company’s co-founder and managing director Ashneer Grover will take a voluntary leave till the end of March. Grover’s decision comes after he faced flak due to a leaked audio clip that purportedly witnessed him using abusive languages against a Kotak Group employee. The company released its statement on the day after it received a request from the managing director, it noted in its statement. The fintech firm said that the operations that Grover used to oversee will be handled by CEO Suhail Sameer.
“Ashneer Grover, our Co-Founder and MD, has today informed the Board
of his decision to take voluntary leave of absence from BharatPe till March end,” BharatPe noted in its statement released on the day.
“Ashneer has co-built BharatPe from scratch and his decision is consistent with his passionate commitment to the future success of the company,” it added.
The company noted that for now, its board had accepted Grover’s decision. “For now, 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,” it said.
“BharatPe will continue to be ably led by our CEO Suhail Sameer and our strong management team,” further said BharatPe in its media statement.
Ashneer Grover’s decision comes days after a controversy around him had erupted when an audio clip, with apparently his voice, had leaked. Grover in the purported clip was heard abusing and threatening an employee of the Kotak Group for not booking shares during the initial public offering (IPO) of FSN E-Commerce Ventures. The FSN E-Commerce Ventures, which operates online beauty and fashion platform Nykaa, saw a bumper listing at the share market and was touted as one of the most successful IPOs of 2021.
However, Grover soon shared a statement on Twitter claiming that the audio clip was fake, saying that it was the work of a scamster. However, he deleted that post later. “Folks. Chill! It’s a FAKE audio by some scamster trying to extort funds (US$ 240K in bitcoins). I refused to buckle. I’ve got more character. And Internet has got enough scamsters,” he had tweeted quickly after the clip went viral on social media.
According to a report by MoneyControl.com, Grover had sent a legal notice after this to the Kotak Group for ” failure to provide IPO financing for the Nykaa IPO.”
“The notice sought damages for the gains Grover and his wife would have made after subscribing to shares worth Rs 500 crore in the company, besides Rs 1 lakh towards the cost of the legal notice,” noted the report by MoneyControl.
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Source: News18