Ashneer Grover's exit from BharatPe spotlights other founders who had run-ins with board, investors: Here’s a look

Ola co-founder versus SoftBank

In April 2019, Bloomberg reported that SoftBank's proposal to inject $1.1 billion into Ola had been rejected by the ride-hailing service's co-founder Bhavish Aggarwal.

The publication quoted sources as saying that SoftBank's initial proposal for funding would have raised its stake in Ola to 40 percent. Aggarwal has been seeking to retain control of the company after SoftBank had acquired a large stake in Uber, and sought for the rivals to merge.

Talks on the deal first began in 2017, with SoftBank proposing an immediate investment of $250 million, followed by the rest of the $1.1 billion sum, which would be injected over six months.

The report quoted sources as saying that Aggarwal had called for a clause granting veto rights to founders over the appointment of any new CEO, a clause which SoftBank was unwilling to accept.

This stalled the talks. SoftBank held discussions to invest in Uber in parallel, becoming its largest stakeholder in January 2018 after investing $9 billion. SoftBank then wanted the two companies to merge, ringing alarm bells for Aggarwal over SoftBank's influence on Ola. 

This stalemate led to SoftBank attempting to acquire Tiger Global's stake in Ola. The report quoted sources as saying that Ola then changed its corporate bylaws to ensure that any sale that was carried out by investors would need the approval of the board, which blocked SoftBank’s move.

The publication also noted in the report that Aggarwal was not present at events which hosted SoftBank-backed founders and Masayoshi Son, founder and current CEO of SoftBank. Aggarwal's absence was particularly felt at an event which included Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. Saudi Arabia has funded close to half of SoftBank's $100 billion Vision Fund.

The report quoted an Ola spokesperson, who denied any tensions with SoftBank.

Housing.com board versus Rahul Yadav 

In July 2015, Mumbai-based online realty platform Housing.com said it had "released its CEO Rahul Yadav with immediate effect" after a board meeting.

Yadav is also the co-founder of the company. The board had taken note of his behaviour towards investors, ecosystem and the media and believed it was not "befitting of a CEO and detrimental to the company".

Yadav had been continuously in the limelight for the past several months.

In March 2015, he got into a public spat with Shailendra Singh, MD at Sequoia Capital India, when he posted his email to the latter, in which he addressed him as "dude" and asked him to "stop messing around" with him. Yadav had accused Singh of trying to poach a few of Housing's employees.

Later, he got into a brawl with the Times of India group, accusing it of slandering Housing.com as ToI ran its own property listings website.

Then, amid reports the board was considering replacing him due to his various misdemeanours, the co-founder wrote a letter to his own company board (backed by investors such as Japan's SoftBank), which started with: "I don't think you guys are intellectually capable enough to have any sensible discussion anymore. This is something which I not just believe but can prove on your faces also!"

Yadav later offered to resign but patched up with the board after apologising.

Soon after, he made news for having gifted all his shares in Housing to employees amounting to about Rs 200 crore, maintaining he was "too young to worry about money". He later also challenged his critics, Deepindar Goyal of Zomato and Bhavish Aggarwal of Ola, to do the same.

The final straw likely came when he wrote an e-mail to employees urging them "to have some fun", and said both 'yes' and 'no' to different journalists who had called up to confirm reports of whether Housing was being taken over.

Sachin Bansal versus Walmart

In May 2018, the group chairman of Flipkart Sachin Bansal, who was deeply involved in negotiations with Walmart, quit the e-commerce firm as the US acquirer reportedly wanted only one founder on board.

Bansal exited from Flipkart after its $16 billion acquisition by global retail giant Walmart in 2018. He sold his 5.5 percent stake for $1 billion.

In a note that he released right after his exit from the company he had built for 10 years, Bansal had said that he would spend time on ‘pending projects, gaming and brushing up his coding skills’.

While he made personal investments even while running Flipkart, he later founded a firm called BAC Acquisitions.

Snapdeal founders versus investors

In April 2017, Snapdeal co-founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal told employees that investors were “driving the discussions around the way forward" for the struggling online marketplace, suggesting that the firm was out of their hands.

“There has been a lot of media reporting and speculation around Snapdeal recently. While our investors are driving the discussions around the way forward, I am reaching out to let you know that the well-being of the entire team is mine and Rohit’s top and only priority. We will do all that we can, and more, in working with our investors to ensure that there is no disruption in employment and that there are positive professional as well as financial outcomes for the team as the way forward becomes clear," they wrote in the email.

This came after a report in March 2017 that SoftBank Group Corp, Snapdeal’s largest investor, had initiated talks to sell the company to one of its bigger rivals, Flipkart or Paytm. At that time, the company had denied it was up for sale.

Also since January that year, hundreds of jobs and spending on discounts, advertising and logistics were slashed after Snapdeal couldn’t get fresh funds.