Nothing to hide, says defiant Grover, hours after resigning

Hours after he resigned from BharatPe, cofounder Ashneer Grover told us in an interview that he was open to making his and his family’s finances public, and challenged board chairman Rajnish Kumar and Sequoia Capital’s Shailendra Singh to do the same. He also claimed to have lost management stock options worth Rs 100 crore in the bust-up with BharatPe.


Also in this letter:
■ Highlights from Grover’s 1,400-word resignation letter
■ Cyberattack on NATO ‘could trigger collective defence clause’
■ Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella's son passes away

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Ashneer Grover, who resigned from BharatPe and its board on Tuesday, spoke to ETtech’s Tarush Bhalla and Samidha Sharma in a video interview on Zoom.

Here are some edited excerpts:

Why did you decide to resign now? Were you preempting some board action against you, considering your resignation came minutes after the board meeting agenda was sent?

I've been pained by the way things have been happening. My view is that even if you have a dispute with someone, you have to sit down and thrash it out. You can't be running the process, which is supposedly a ‘confidential process’, but everything gets leaked, to the extent of board minutes…

What about the timing of your resignation?

The fact that you know the board meeting is today means everything is leaked. The BharatPe board is preempting what I’m doing, not the other way around. The board agenda came in at 11:54 pm last night so what led the board to hold a meeting at such a short notice... the board meeting is at 7:30 pm today (Tuesday). Please ask Rajnish Kumar what made him call a board meeting at 11:30 pm. Was that because he had to take instructions from his ‘masters’ in the US?

What is your message to the board?

I’m challenging the board to televise the board meeting on national television. I don’t have to hide anything… I am open to publishing my financial assets, my liabilities, all my holdings, all my bank account statements in the newspaper. And this is not just me, but for my wife (Madhuri Jain) and family members. Will Shailendra (Singh, Sequoia Capital) and Rajnish Kumar open their bank statements?

Board meeting today: The final findings of the governance review by PwC, one of the independent consultants hired by BharatPe, is expected to be tabled at a board meeting on Tuesday evening, sources told us. The meeting is expected to extend late into the night, they said.

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Ashneer Grover told ET he has “given up a lot”, including management stock options worth Rs 100 crore, in his spat with the company’s board.

Grover also said BharatPe had “defrauded” his wife, former BharatPe controller Madhuri Jain, of her employee stock options.

“Monetarily I have actually given up close to Rs 100 crore of management stock options that were to be given to me. They have snatched that away from me. They have defrauded Madhuri (Jain) by taking some Rs 12 crore of equity from her,” Grover said.

Jain was sacked by BharatPe for allegedly misappropriating funds, we reported on January 23.


A warning: Grover also warned BharatPe’s management and board that if they “came after” him, he would respond in kind. “My point is very simple -- if you come after me, I will come after you. And then there will be no holds barred… The smart people in the room already know what I know,” he added.

Attacks continue: Grover also attacked BharatPe’s review committee, including board chairman Rajnish Kumar, chief executive Suhail Sameer, and general counsel Sumeet Singh, saying they had negotiated better stock option terms than any employee at the fintech firm.

Ironically, it was Grover who appointed Kumar as the company’s board chairman last October. He had also paved the way for Sameer, who joined the company in 2020, to take over as chief executive last August.

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Less than two months after the infamous audio clip surfaced, Ashneer Grover resigned from BharatPe, the company he founded, on Tuesday.

In a 1,400-word resignation letter, sent to BharatPe's board at midnight, Grover accused its investors of treating founders like slaves.

"You treat us founders as slaves – pushing us to build multi-billion-dollar businesses and cutting us down at will. [The] investor-founder relationship in India is one of master-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," he wrote.

Here are some other highlights from Grover’s resignation letter:

• “Am I perfect? As every other human being does, I am sure I have my follies. I have been told that I am too straight forward, headstrong, and have very demanding standards when it comes to work. But it is these qualities that have resulted in BharatPe’s exponential growth in becoming an industry behemoth.”

• “The fundamental fact is that all of you as investors are so far removed from reality that you’ve forgotten what real businesses look like and have no appreciation for what it took to run this enterprise day in and day out.”

• “Your views of businesses and problems on the ground are so colored by the windows of the Ivory Tower in which you all reside that you have no connect whatsoever with the human element of the business.”

• “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 till date.”

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A cyberattack on a NATO member state could trigger Article 5, its collective defence clause, a NATO official said on Monday, amid concerns that chaos in cyberspace around Russia's invasion of Ukraine could spill over into other territories.

The military alliance has for years made clear that a serious cyberattack could trigger the clause, but such a scenario has so far been largely hypothetical.

Cyberwar concerns: Britain and the United States have warned of potential cyberattacks on Ukraine which could have international consequences should, for example, malicious software designed to target networks in Ukraine start to spread elsewhere.

Visa, Mastercard block Russian institutions: US payment card firms Visa and Mastercard have blocked multiple Russian financial institutions from their network, complying with government sanctions imposed over Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.

Visa said it was taking prompt action to ensure compliance with applicable sanctions, adding that it would donate $2 million for humanitarian aid. Mastercard also promised to contribute $2 million.

Ukraine gets Starlink internet terminals: Meanwhile, Ukraine said it had received Starlink satellite internet terminals donated by SpaceX.


But John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab project, took to Twitter to warn that the terminals could become Russian targets.

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Microsoft said Zain Nadella, son of chief executive Satya Nadella and his wife Anu, died Monday morning. He was 26 years old and had been born with cerebral palsy.

The software maker shared the news with its executive staff in an email. The message asked executives to hold the family in their thoughts and prayers while giving them space to grieve privately.

For the right cause: Since taking on the CEO’s role in 2014, Nadella has driven the company to design products to better serve users with disabilities and cited lessons he learned from raising and supporting Zain.

Last year, the Children’s Hospital, where Zain received much of his treatment, joined with the Nadellas to establish the Zain Nadella Endowed Chair in Pediatric Neurosciences, as part of Seattle Children’s Center for Integrative Brain Research.

Today’s ETtech Top 5 newsletter was curated by Arun Padmanabhan in New Delhi and Zaheer Merchant in Mumbai. Graphics and illustrations by Rahul Awasthi.