Did Ashneer Grover not co-found BharatPe?

After Ashneer Grover sent his resignation to BharatPe's board during the early hours of March 1, all eyes are now on the legal battle between Grover and the company management.
 
Even though Grover has come on record and demanded Rs 4,000 crore from BharatPe for his exit, company filings accessed by BusinessToday.In from Tracxn shows Grover’s stake is worth Rs 1,914 crore.
 
Grover, according to the flings, owns a 9.5 per cent stake in BharatPe, whereas co-founder Shashvat Nakrani owns a 7.8 per cent stake worth Rs 1,567 crore. BharatPe’s current valuation as per its Series E funding round which was held in August 2021 was Rs 20,082.5 crore or nearly $2.8 billion.
 
Sequoia Capital India owns a 19.6 per cent stake in BharatPe — its largest shareholder — worth Rs 3,945 crore whereas Ribbit Capital has an 11 per cent stake at Rs 2,214 crore. Other major stakeholders include Beenext (9.6 per cent stake), Coatue (12.4 per cent), Tiger Global (3.7 per cent) and Steadview Capital (4.1 per cent).
 
Notably, CEO Suhail Sameer has a 0.1 per cent stake which is worth Rs 13.3 crore.

 
The story of four-year-old BharatPe
 
In his resignation letter addressed to BharatPe, Ashneer Grover said: “Dear Board, I write this with a heavy heart as today I am being forced to bid adieu to a company of which I am a founder. I say with my head held high that today this company stands as a leader in the fintech world.”
 
However, details accessed from Tracxn stated that Grover did not co-found BharatPe. The Delhi-headquartered fintech major was incorporated in March 2018 by Bhavik Koladiya and Shashvat Nakrani with an initial capital of Rs 1 lakh.
 
Nakrani, an IIT Delhi dropout, and Koladiya who had worked in the US for a decade jointly founded Resilient Innovations, the parent firm of BharatPe. Interestingly, Koladiya who owned the largest stake in BharatPe during the year of its incorporation completely exited the fintech company.
 
The company filings further indicate that Grover was onboarded by Nakrani and Koladiya by transferring the shares to him. Grover owned a 31.9 per cent stake in BharatPe as of July 2, 2018.

Grover in his Linkedln profile mentioned that during his three years and 6 months tenure at BharatPe, he has built largest offline merchant network in India by making mobile payments acceptance free and ubiquitous.

Nakrani the 23 year old co-founder of BharatPe who is also the youngest to make it to the prestigious IIFL Wealth Hurun India Rich List had earlier said that BharatPe was his brainchild which he conceived after starting another venture of his bookmyhaircut.com during his college days.

Another co-founder Koladiya has openly put his weight behind the current BharatPe CEO Suhail Sameer and as per Crunchbase is currently the Group Head-Technology Products at the company.

Grover, who was an IIT Delhi graduate and IIM Ahmedabad alumnus, along with Nakrani steered BharatPe towards phenomenal growth by capturing the nascent merchants' payments market in India with products like interoperable BharatPe QR Code, which did not charge a fee from the onboarded merchants.
 
The 2018-2021 period overturned the company’s fortunes with merchants' payments, merchant lending and UPI with the valuation jumping from Rs 1.9 crore in July 2018 (during its seed round investment) to Rs 20,082.5 crore in August 2021.
 
Grover, as per the company filings sourced from Tracxn, has realised returns worth Rs 8.4 crore from selling a part of his equity in the company so far whereas some of the earliest angel investors in the company have received 100-200X returns on their investments.
 
BusinessToday.In had earlier reported that the BharatPe board headed by ex-SBI Chairman Rajnish Kumar had decided to terminate the services of Ashneer Grover over charges of funds embezzlement and GST evasion charges.

On March 1, A BharatPe spokesperson told the Business Today in response to an emailed query, “Ashneer Grover resigned as Managing Director and Board Director of BharatPe minutes after receiving the agenda for upcoming Board meeting that included submission of the PWC report regarding his conduct and considering actions based on it. The Board reserves the right to take action based on the report’s findings".
 
The company had paid Rs 11 crore as a penalty after raids were conducted by the Directorate General of GST Intelligence (DGGI) at the fintech's head office and issued summons to the company’s authorised signatory to appear before the authority on November 1, 2021.
 
Also, Madhuri Jain Grover, wife of Ashneer and the head of controls at the firm overseeing company finances and recruitments, was sacked by the company last month.

Jain had reacted by saying she didn’t tender any resignation and had shot a letter to the BharatPe board questioning how the contents of preliminary findings of an ongoing corporate governance review were made public.
 
Ashneer Grover, who shot to fame as one of the prominent panellists on the reality TV show Shark tank India, was earlier in news over a viral audio clip allegedly featuring him and his wife who were heard abusing a Kotak Mahindra Bank employee over non-allocation of shares during Nykaa IPO last year.
 
Kotak Group had confirmed then that it received a legal notice from Grover over the issue whereas Grover said that the audio clip was fake.