In an extensive, sentimental, and emotionally charged resignation letter following a host of controversies and altercations with BharatPe board, cofounder Ashneer Grover announced he has quit as MD and director noting that he was "being forced to bid adieu to a company he had founded".
In the long letter, Grover wrote how he felt that founders are treated like slaves and "pushed to build multi-billion-dollar businesses and cut down at will". In fact, he went on to say that the "investor-founder relation in India is that of a master and slave".
"I am the rebel slave who must be hung by the tree so none of the other slaves can dare to be like me ever again. Unfortunately, I refuse to walk that path and refuse to tolerate this continuous and shameful vilification of me and my family. I have been the one who founded this company and built it up to its enviable position today, no wonder you want to oust me for your vested interests. So when do we end this? We end this now," his letter continued vehemently.
As Grover quits in a dramatic fashion, here’s a look at the journey of the startup he created as put forth by his resignation letter.
BharatPe journey
Founded in 2018, Delhi-based BharatPe, which is valued at around $2.85 billion within four years of its launch, offers a QR code for merchants and small businesses to accept UPI payments. Notably, this makes up for around 80 percent of its $16 billion annual total payment volumes.
However, most of the revenue comes from merchant and consumer-lending products, with buy now pay later (BNPL) offering PostPe registering a total payment volume of $321 million within just three months of its launch.
BharatPe has a network extending to about 100 Indian cities. The firm also acquired a multi-brand loyalty platform, PAYBACK India, from American Express and ICICI Investments Strategic Fund back in June 2021. The company has raised more than $600 million in funding from firms including Sequoia Capital India, Insight Partners, Steadfast Capital, and Tiger Global.
In his resignation letter, Grover expressed how "BharatPe was the last entrant in UPI space and competed with Goliaths like Paytm, PhonePe, and GooglePay – but still emerged as a leader in the industry. I had the vision to disrupt payments with ‘0% MDR’, lending with shopkeeper ‘loans against payments’, P2P with ‘12%Club’, and BNPL with ‘Postpe’."
"With my efforts and hard work, the company has created a network of more than 1 crore (10 mn) shopkeepers who transact more than Rs 100,000 crore ($16 bn) annually and lent out more than Rs 4,000 crore ($0.5 bn) as loans. It is indisputable that BharatPe loans have helped lakhs of small businesses fight organised e-commerce and COVID," Grover wrote in his resignation letter.
"Most importantly and the only time for any fintech in India – with my constant efforts the company has acquired a small finance bank licence to create ‘Unity Small Finance Bank’. With a team of less than five hundred on-roll employees, aggregate spending of less than $150 mn, and by raising $615 mn from ten of the marquee investors without using a single banker, the success story of BharatPe is for everyone to see," he continued.
Grover said how he had the "gumption and intent to find a solution for PMC Bank", observing how the "height at which BharatPe stands today is the result of the hard work of the last four years".
"While scripting the commercial success of BharatPe, the company was also affording liquidity to our employees of more than Rs 100 crore against their ESOPs and giving at least eighty times returns to each of its twenty eight angel investors. While the company was valued at Rs 20,000 crore ($3 bn) as per the Series E round; today it would be valued at Rs 40,000 crores ($6 bn) within a span of less than a year. No other startup of similar valuation has been able to achieve what BharatPe has achieved today that too by utilising less than Rs 1,000 crore," the entrepreneur, noted for his mercurial, often impolite way of speaking, detailed in his note.
"Since you clearly believe you can run this company better without me – I am leaving you with this challenge. Build incrementally even half of the value I created so far – I am leaving you with three times the funds I’ve utilised to date. I hereby resign as the managing director of BharatPe, effective immediately. I also resign as a director of the board. I will continue as the single largest individual shareholder of the company. I have founded and built BharatPe into what it is today, and this identity, none of you can take away from me," Grover signed off.
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