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ASHNEER GROVER
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DOGLAPAN
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The Hard Truth about Life and Start-Ups
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PENGUIN BOOKS
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Contents
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Prologue
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1. Malviya Nagar: Where It All Began
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2. ‘Teri Hawa Kitni Hai?’
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3. Mads: The Love of My Life
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4. My Naukri Days
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5. Grofers: The Beginning of My Entrepreneurial Journey
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6. A Dark Phase
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7. BharatPe: The Genesis
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8. The Building Blocks
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9. The Stairway to Success
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10. Souring Relationships
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11. Martyr to One’s Own Cause
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12. Shark Tank
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13. The Nykaa IPO and Kotak Saga
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14. The Ultimate Deception
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15. Truth Is Stranger than Fiction
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Epilogue
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Follow Penguin
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Copyright
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This book is dedicated to my wife, Madhuri Jain Grover,
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my parents, Neeru and Ashok Grover,
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and my kids, Avyukt and Mannat.
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Thanks for making me whoever I am today!
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Prologue
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25 January 2022, 4 p.m.
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‘Joining back on 1st Feb’. That was the subject line of the email I had shot
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off to the board of directors that cold January evening. Earlier that month, I
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had been coerced into going on a voluntary leave of absence from BharatPe,
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a company worth US$3 billion (over Rs 20,000 crore) that I had built
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painstakingly at an unprecedented pace over the last three and a half years
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as its founder and managing director.
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The whole of January had been a blur—I was hit relentlessly by one
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controversy after another. What started with a ransom call became a leaked
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audio, and then became leaked legal notices and arbitrary statements by
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Kotak bank. While the nation was enjoying Shark Tank India and
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celebrating the new wave of entrepreneurship that was taking the country
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and millions of TV screens by storm every weeknight from 9–10 p.m., I
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was personally fighting a bloody board battle aimed at wresting control of
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BharatPe from me. During the last week of the month I was preoccupied
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handling deceit, betrayal and politics by my own co-founder, hired
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management and thankless investors at BharatPe.
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Once I proceeded on the so-called voluntary leave, I found out that the
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locks at BharatPe’s Malviya Nagar office had been changed, the CCTV
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cameras had been switched off, my office and desktop had been broken into
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and bouncers had been stationed there. Not only were the events absolutely
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bizarre, but my writing to the board seeking an explanation for this gross
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overreach was met with absolute silence. Clearly, I had a lot to deal with.
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But for the time being, I was relieved that the issue with Kotak hadn’t been
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escalated further and that the bigoted press had lost interest in it. It was time
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for me to resume office and focus on the next phase of growth for the
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business, or so I thought as I sent out that intimation of rejoining office.
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25 January 2022, 4.52 p.m.
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Sitting at my desk at home, with the light January sun falling over my
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shoulders, I was thinking through the many problems I needed to solve,
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especially as we had to operationalize the newly acquired banking licence at
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Unity SFB, the first-ever licence granted by the Reserve Bank of India
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(RBI) to an Indian fintech company, and complete the impending takeover
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of the beleaguered Punjab and Maharashtra Cooperative (PMC) Bank. That
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it wasn’t VSS, or Sachin Bansal, but Ashneer Grover who had won the first
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and only bank licence given to a fintech was no mean achievement—one
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that, I was certain, would take the company to even greater heights. But it
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was also a great responsibility, as we had to first give 10 lakh depositors
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access to their capital, which had been stuck in their PMC bank accounts
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for almost two years.
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My thought process was broken with the ping of an email hitting my
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inbox. ‘Shorter Notice for 11th Board Meeting’, its subject line read. To my
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surprise, within less than an hour of my informing the board that I planned
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to resume office, I was sent a mail from the company secretary at BharatPe,
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informing me of a board meeting being called at short notice, within the
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next three hours. We were to meet at 8 p.m. the same day on Zoom. A
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bigger shock awaited me when I clicked on the file marked ‘Agenda’. Item
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number 5 stared at me; it said, ‘To consider & accept the recommendation
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of the review committee to require Mr. Ashneer Grover to be on leave till
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March 31, 2022.’
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25 January 2022, 8 p.m.
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‘My name is Ashneer Grover. I am attending this meeting on Zoom from
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New Delhi. There is no one else in the room with me.’
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The mandatory roll call, in hindsight, was perhaps the only predictable
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part of this meeting. The chairman, Rajnish Kumar, joined ten minutes late,
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and his first order of business was to ask the Shardul Amarchand
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Mangaldas (Shardul Amarchand) and Alvarez & Marsal team to leave the
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virtual meeting. Why had they been invited in the first place to a board
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meeting if they were supposed to leave? Wasn’t the chairman privy to the
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list of invitees to the meeting?
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As the meeting began, it was stated that a resolution had been passed to
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