Ankiti Bose, former CEO of B2B style startup Zilingo, has filed a case of sexual harassment in opposition to the corporate’s cofounder Dhruv Kapoor and its former chief working officer Aadi Vaidya.
A case was registered in opposition to the 2 males underneath sections 354 (A) and 354 (D) pertaining to sexual harassment and stalking, respectively, of the Indian Penal Code on Tuesday on the Kasturba Marg police station in suburban Mumbai. The Mumbai police are but to summon Kapoor and Vaidya. Each the sections are non-bailable in nature and punishable with as much as 5 years in jail.

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In response to the FIR, in March 2021, the 2 allegedly threatened Bose and sought sexual favours. “The 2 used to name at odd hours of evening and threatened me that they’d sack me if I don’t prolong sexual favours to them and meet them in a resort room. This brought on me loads of psychological agony and stress,” the FIR reviewed by ET reads.

It additionally states that she was threatened in opposition to talking in regards to the firm’s deteriorating monetary situation.

In an announcement, Kapoor termed Bose’s allegations in opposition to him as “fully baseless, unfaithful and malicious”. “An intensive investigation has already confirmed her wrongdoing based mostly on which she was terminated from the corporate. This seems to be nothing however retaliatory behaviour,” he mentioned.

In a separate assertion, Vaidya additionally mentioned the allegations in opposition to him have been “fully baseless and unfaithful”. “This looks like nothing however a transparent afterthought executed with a malicious intention to hurt my popularity and harass me,” he mentioned.

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“…Because the chief working officer, Aadi Vaidya engaged in misconduct by falsely attributing loss-making offers to me and increasing commerce credit score to varied events in my title. He then used these offers to threaten me by falsely implicating me to buyers, even supposing all operational dealings have been performed by him in my earlier firm. I’ve been threatened, deceived, and had errors attributed to me to ensure that Vaidya to fraudulently purchase my shares that are valued at a number of crores,” the FIR provides. On the delay in submitting the FIR, the complainant claims that whereas she was sacked in Could 2022, in June of that 12 months she herself resigned from her submit, after which she took up a brand new job that stored her busy, and she or he didn’t get go away from work to file a criticism.

In April 2022, after alleged discrepancies have been present in Zilingo’s accounting, the corporate suspended Bose because the CEO. Later in June that 12 months, she resigned from the directorships at holding firm Zilingo Pte Ltd in addition to its subsidiaries, saying “opacity of data” with respect to her as a board member and a shareholder led to the choice.

The alleged discrepancies in its accounting have been found on the time of a due diligence course of for a brand new funding spherical, via which it was seeking to increase $150-200 million at a valuation of $1.2 billion.

In Could 2022, Zilingo commissioned Deloitte to look into the harassment costs levelled by Bose.

Bose, who labored with Sequoia Capital India (now Peak XV Companions) earlier than launching Zilingo, had disputed allegations of accounting discrepancies in opposition to her, and countered her suspension. She had, on the time, termed the corporate’s motion a “witch hunt” and hinted that it was triggered by harassment complaints she had raised in opposition to an investor within the agency.

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