With culture at stake in unicorn land, spotlight on founder-VC equation

The BharatPe saga raises questions about the impact of outsized investor shareholding in young enterprises

The going is never meant to be easy in a startup.

Incumbents create roadblocks, regulators dilly dally on sorting out the rulebook and employees leave at the drop of a hat for fatter paychecks. Creditors don’t touch them with a bargepole and suppliers are suspicious of a sudden drop or spike in orders.

Amid all this, it’s the venture capital (VC) investors who repose faith in the ability of startups to make it big.

But BharatPe founder Ashneer Gro­ver’s resignation, last week, struck at the heart of this relationship. The letter of resignation had a set of damning allegations: That