BharatPe's Ashneer threatens legal action over comment against sister

In a fresh battle, BharatPe founder and former managing director Ashneer Grover has threatened a legal action against CEO Suhail Sameer and the board for his comments on professional networking platform LinkedIn against his sister Ashima Grover, along with seeking a resignation from Chairman Rajnish Kumar.

In a letter written to BharatPe Board, Ashneer said that Sameer should be "immediately served a show-cause notice for his despicable public behaviour and immediately put on leave of absence to manage the damage to the Brand of the company".

In a LinkedIn post on Thursday, Sameer replied to a comment posted by Ashima Grover, who is Senior Manager at MetLife, saying "Your brother stole all the money. Very little left to pay the salaries."

Ashima had commented on a post by an employee at BharatPe who vented out his frustration over the non-payment of salaries.

Ashima had written, "That's the sad part... That's a shameless bunch."

In the letter to the board, Ashneer said: "As a Board which under the Chairmanship of Rajnish Kumar has claimed to be the epitome of corporate governance, I would want to ask what action is the Board going to take against Suhail Sameer?"

The letter was marked to company investors, along with Chairman Kumar, CEO Sameer and co-founder Shahshvat Nakrani.

"Moreover, the Chairman Rajnish Kumar should immediately resign. The current incident clearly brings out the fact that Rajnish Kumar condoning the life threat to me by Bhavik Koladiya from his own house and all the planned media leaks leading to my resignation in self respect, has further emboldened the current management to act as hooligans," Ashneer further wrote.

The company was yet to react to the letter.

Ashneer further wrote: "In absence of a written apology, I and my sister reserve our rights to seek damages and pursue criminal defamation against Suhail Sameer and the BharatPe Board".

Earlier, as Ashneer took a dig at the board members of BharatPe over its first quarter of alleged 'degrowth' and 'maximum cash burn', the fintech platform said that it actually registered the strongest quarter (Q1 2022) ever in its history.

The company said it registered four times growth in its overall revenue in the said quarter over the same period last year.

"On a sequential-quarter basis, the growth has been 30 per cent, despite the third wave of Covid-19," a BharatPe spokesperson had told IANS.