India worships founders like gods, but does 'visarjan' if things go south, says Cred’s Kunal Shah

India has seen several instances of alleged fraud and financial irregularities involving Indian unicorn founders and startups have been reported.

Serial investor and fintech firm Cred’s founder, Kunal Shah, on May 22 said India has a unique problem of worshiping founders like gods, however, one wrong step and it does 'visarjan', or immersion in water, in a Hindu ritual.

He was answering a question on negative coverage of BluSmart founder allegedly diverting loans meant for funding BluSmart's electric vehicle purchases for personal use.

“We have a unique problem of worshipping our founders like gods and then doing the visarjan when something goes wrong. We should treat them like humans who will make a lot of mistakes and look at them for 20-30 years, and see if they're going to make it or not,” Shah said at Prosus’ Luminate event in Bengaluru.

For context, loans taken by the founders were used to purchase a luxury apartment in DLF's The Camellias in Gurugram and high-end golf equipment worth Rs 26 lakh.

BluSmart was co-founded by Gensol Engineering promoters Anmol Singh Jaggi and Puneet Singh Jaggi in 2019.

Kunal Shah further said the coverage of the media makes for great content and he 'would not want to take that away from media', for these are 'great stories and great content'.

Nonetheless, Shah believes that the country needs to be a lot more resilient. “...I think we have the tendency of making all these Unicorn founders feel like gods,” he added.

India has seen several instances of alleged fraud and financial irregularities involving Indian unicorn founders and startups have been reported.

For example, Bizongo faced scrutiny after auditors flagged potential financial irregularities, including questionable vendor-customer relationships and missing Proof of Delivery (POD) documents, leading to investigations.

Car repair startup GoMechanic's founders were reported to be pushing for a higher valuation than offered by Tiger Global. Company co-founder Amit Bhasin admitted that he, along with his three co-founders, “got carried away” while trying to grow at all costs and made “grave errors” in judgment.

On another instance, the Income Tax Department raided Infra.Market and its founders' residences, though no unaccounted assets were found.