Bharat pe

"On a sequential-quarter basis, the growth has been 30 per cent, despite the third wave of Covid-19," a BharatPe spokesperson told IANS. "Comparing month-on-month, all our metrics have grown at the fastest pace -- merchant total payments value (TPV) (17 per cent), consumer TPV (39 per cent), loans facilitated (31 per cent), and revenue (21 per cent) in March over February," the spokesperson informed.

Ashneer, also a popular judge on the reality show Shark Tank India, has accused BharatPe CEO Sameer of siding with the investors to remove him from the company. After reports surfaced that government regulators may expand their probe into BharatPe's financial books after the Ashneer-Madhuri Grover saga, the fintech platform said last month it will fully comply with the law of the land.

BharatPe was the Global Partner of the tournament. Sources close to the development told IANS that Grover allegedly sold each pass for at least 750 dirhams (approximately Rs 15,000) and in the process, made several crores, which were allegedly deposited in a Dubai account. Some BharatPe employees told IANS that they were given passes for the common stands but not the VIP ones.

The company has partnered with RBI-approved non-bank financial companies (NBFCs) to offer gold loan of up to Rs 20 lakh. Now available for merchants in Delhi-NCR, Bengaluru and Hyderabad, the gold loan offering will reach 20 cities by the end of this year. "We have been able to facilitate disbursals of over Rs 3,000 crore to 3 lakh merchant partners. With Gold loan, we have ventured into the big-ticket, secured loan category," said Suhail Sameer, CEO, BharatPe.

Amid the hullabaloo over Ashneer and Madhuri Jain Grover and their tussle with BharatPe, the admin head at the fintech firm who was Madhuri Jain's close relative and allegedly involved in the misappropriation of funds, was also sacked.

Deepak Jagdishram Gupta, who is Madhuri Jain's brother-in-law, worked as admin head and reported to head of controls Madhuri Jain, who, in turn, reported directly to Co-founder and Managing Director Ashneer Grover. They were allegedly involved in siphoning of funds via creating bogus vouchers and inflated vendor bills.

BharatPe has already conducted a thorough internal governance review via Alvarez and Marsal, a leading management consultant and risk advisory firm, and global audit firm PwC into the financial irregularities at the firm during Ashneer-Madhuri's tenure. Ashneer quit as BharatPe accused him, his wife and their relatives of being engaged in extensive misappropriation of company funds

According to Bloomberg, office frugality clashed with the couple's apparently glitzy lifestyle, rubbing some employees the wrong way. Grover and his wife upgraded their modest home for a rented penthouse and renovated another luxury property. He also purchased a Porsche and told multiple people at the company that he spent $130,000 on a dining table, the report said citing employees.

As the Ashneer-BharatPe fight now on a legal course, the Board of the company is not going to intervene in a new controversy regarding the fintech company's original founder Bhavik Koladiya and his stake in the firm. Sources said, on Tuesday, that this is something Bhavik and Ashneer have to sort out among each other and the Board will stick to the internal governance review done by third-party law and risk assessment firms.

Amid the Ashneer Grover-BharatPe tussle, the fintech platform's co-founder Shashvat Nakrani has written a letter to employees, saying that the whole episode is an aberration and not the norm and the company will turn this crisis into an opportunity. Stressing that the company has to acknowledge and address the areas of improvement and the most critical is "culture" and that's "us".