Ashneer Grover to BharatPe board: Suhail Sameer should be sent on leave, Rajnish Kumar must resign

Bharat Pe co-founder Ashneer Grover

BharatPe's founder and former MD Ashneer Grover has written a letter to the startup's board seeking an apology from the CEO Suhail Sameer for comments on LinkedIn against his sister Ashima Grover, and has also sought a resignation from Chairman .

This comes after an exchange of words on a LinkedIn post by a BharatPe employee which said that he and some other employees were not given salaries for the month of March, which elicited comments from Grover and his sister. To one of the comments by Ashima Grover, Sameer responded saying that her brother stole all the money so they have very little left to pay salaries.

In his letter to the board Ashneer Grover wrote, "As a Board which under the Chairmanship of Rajnish Kumar has claimed to be the epitome of corporate governance, I would want to ask what action is the Board going to take against Suhail Sameer ? Going by precedents and self proclaimed high standards of this Board, the CEO should be immediately served a show cause notice for his despicable public behaviour and immediately put on leave of absence to manage the damage on the Brand of the company."

The letter was marked to investors including Hashjit Sethi of Sequoia Capital, Micky Malka of Ribbit Capital, Teruhide Sato of BEENEXT, John Weinstein and Deven Parekh of Insight Partners and Rahul Kishore of Coatue Management, besides Kumar, Sameer and co-founder Shahshvat Nakrani.

Grover also took this opportunity to call for action against former SBI Chairman and veteran banker Rajnish Kumar.

"Moreover the Chairman Rajnish Kumar should immediately resign. The current incident clearly brings out the fact that Rajnish Kumar condoning the life threat to me by Bhavik Koladiya from his own house and all the planned media leaks leading to my resignation in self respect, has further emboldened the current management to act as hooligans," he wrote.

Moneycontrol could not independently verify these allegations.

Grover further said that, if Sameer did not provide a written apology to him and his sister, they might seek damages and pursue a criminal defamation case against not just Sameer but also the Board of BharatPe.

"In absence of a written apology, I and my sister reserve our rights to seek damages and pursuing criminal defamation against Suhail Sameer and the BharatPe Board. My sister, whose reputation has been irreparably damaged by this comment, will also be in her right to take up this with the Women’s commission and appropriate authorities," he wrote.​

After the LinkedIn post, BharatPe had denied any social media comments which suggest that the company has not paid salaries to its employees.

Also Read | Ashneer Grover pokes BharatPe for 'snatching keys': ‘Ab nani yaad aayegi’

It had clarified in a statement, "All the employees of the company have been paid their March salary in full. As per the company policy, employees serving their notice period will receive their full and final settlement amount in the due course as per company policy ."

Sameer had also apologised for his comment to Ashima Grover on the post in another comment that he posted later saying his response was 'out of line'. He added that the company was working on ​paying out the full and final settlement for employees on their notice period.

"My comment was a reaction to a particular statement, not the post. But I accept the mistake. I request you to also have patience, and refrain from building a story based on false narrative," Sameer commented.

Also Read | Ashneer Grover vs BharatPe on LinkedIn. Shots fired as CEO says ‘he stole all money’

This incident is one of the many clashes of words that preceded and continued after Grover's bitter exit from the company. Grover and his wife Madhuri Jain Grover exited the company after allegations of misappropriations of funds surfaced following governance audits conducted by Alvarez & Marsal and PwC.

Since then both Grover and his wife have maintained that their ouster from the company was unfair and have blamed CEO Sameer and Chairman Kumar several times.

In the letter, Grover also invoked the governance review saying, "It (the incident) also proves that in the Governance Review which was supposed to be all encompassing, the Chairman refused to look into the allegations made against Suhail altogether, further leading him to believe he is above everything."