BENGALURU: The corporate tussle between the founder and former Managing Director Ashneer Grover, and the current management gets uglier by the day. A social media post on unpaid salary by a BharatPe employee on Thursday triggered another verbal duel between Ashneer Grover and BharatPe CEO Suhail Sameer.
Karan Sarki, a senior associate IT at BharatPe posted on LinkedIn saying that they have not received their salary for March month. “All the old admin staff of BharatPe has been terminated by you without giving any reason and their salaries have not been paid,” he said. The post soon attracted the attention of other employees as well as that of Ashneer Grover.
Grover replied tagging Hersimran Kaur (Head of financial control at BharatPe) and Suhail Sameer. He said, “Folks please look into this. Not done - their salaries have to be paid first before anything.” Grover’s sister Aashima Grover too joined the conversation and said, “That’s the sad part... That’s a shameless bunch!” Tagging Aashima, Sameer hit back at her saying “Tere bhai ne saara paisa chura liya. (Your brother stole all the money) Very little left to pay salaries.”
Many LinkedIn followers said it was the worst comment they ever read from a CEO. Soon after the backlash, Sameer apologised and requested everyone to have patience and refrain from building a story based on false narratives.
“I apologise to have irked many of you. In hindsight, it was out of line. We are already working on past employees' full and final being paid out. My comment was a reaction to a particular statement, not the post,” he said.
BharatPe denied social media comments about unpaid salaries to its employees. “All the employees of the company have been paid their March salary in full. As per the company policy, employees serving their notice period will receive their full and final settlement amount in the due course as per company policy,” the fintech firm said.