The chief executive officer of Indian fintech stat-up, BharatPe, Suhail Sameer came out recently to apologize for his public comments on the founder of BharatPe Mr. Ashneer Grover. His comments accused Mr. Ashneer Grover of siphoning funds out of the company for his personal gain and that there were barely any funds left to pay the employees their salary.
Ashneer Grover has already been mired with controversy for a few months now. Mr. Grover was stripped off of his titles 3 months ago in January after many of his divisive actions came out in the public. He was caught using abusive language to a few employees of Kotak Mahindra Bank during a business meeting. He also took part in a few fraudulent activities which came out into the light when a comprehensive audit was done on BharatPe by a third-party firm. His exact words and actions have not been revealed to the public.
A few months prior to this, Mr. Grover’s wife, Mrs. Madhuri Jain the co-founder of BharatPe was also accused of diverting company funds out for her personal use. She was caught paying for beauty treatments using the company’s account and even took family trips to the USA and UAE using the firm’s account.
Recently, a LinkedIn post by a BharatPe employee surfaced which stated that he and many other employees had yet to receive their salaries for the month of March. He also spoke about many administrative employees being shown the door even though their work has been well over satisfactory.
This post invited the replies of Mr. Suhail Sameer and Mr. Ashneer Grover. Grover’s sister had commented on the post to which Mr. Sameer replied by saying “sister, your brother has taken all the funds.” This left a bad taste not only to the Grovers but to employees and the public.
Mr. Sameer then went on social to apologize for distasteful comments and said that he had crossed the line with that statement and should not have said it. He then went on to say that he and the company are working hard to fulfil not only the employee’s salaries, but even ex-employees’ salaries. His comment was apparently in reaction that one particular comment and not the post at all. He then said that the mistake is his and will bear the brunt of his actions but urged the public to not twist the stories and make him or anyone from BharatPe look like the bad guys.
