From unicorn founder, banking license to toxic culture and legal notices: Ashneer Grover and BharatPe's rollercoaster journey

BharatPe founder Ashneer Grover is one of the investor panellists on the Indian adaptation of “Shark Tank”.

Ashneer Grover seems to have lived many lives in a few years where most people's one life was threatened by the Covid-19 pandemic. In just over three years, his fintech startup BharatPe has become among India's biggest fintechs, and received a coveted banking license that even eluded larger and more influential company Paytm and its founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma. Its valuation zoomed to nearly $3 billion, making the 3 year-old firm India's third most valuable fintech for a few months.

Behind the scenes though, a wildly different set of things were happening. BharatPe's employees were leaving in droves due to a poor and punishing work culture, and Grover stepped back for Suhail Sameer to take charge of daily affairs of the company.

And in the last week things really heated up. Grover was found in a leaked audio to be verbally abusing and screaming at a Kotak Mahindra Bank employee for not getting allocation to Nykaa's Initial Public Offering (IPO). While Grover denied the claims, the evidence is now irrefutable. This, added with his unfriendly and abrasive behavior on Shark Tank India, the Indian edition of the US-based renowned entrepreneur-investor reality show, did not help. Moneycontrol summarizes everything that has happened so far.