BENGALURU: Fintech firm BharatPe CEO Suhail Sameer has said that an interim report by review partners will be out in a couple of weeks. In a letter to employees, a copy of which is with TNIE, Sameer said that many of the findings of the review are pretty standard, there are a “couple of more allegations, which the review is still substantiating.”
BharatPe has been under the spotlight ever since an audio clip purportedly showing Ashneer Grover abusing a bank employee for failing to secure allocation of shares in Nykaa’s IPO, went viral. Soon after this, Grover and his wife Madhuri Grover took a voluntary leave of absence from the company. Also, Grover has been accused of financial fraud and the fintech board has initiated a complete audit of the governance processes.
BharatPe CEO Suhail Sameer has told employees to trust the board. “Whatever the board will decide, will be beyond doubt, in the best interests of our employees, our merchants and our consumers,” he said.
The board of BharatPe is conducting an independent audit of the company’s internal processes and systems through its legal firm, Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas, which has appointed Alvarez and Marsal, a leading management consultant and risk advisory firm to advise the board on its recommendations.
On the business front, he said the company is witnessing stellar lending collection performance. “A couple of fab products ready to launch. We hit the annualised TPV run-rate of $16 billion in December, and are already back at that run-rate in February despite many markets still impacted with Covid,” he said.
Sameer also told employees that they have huge amounts of cash in the bank. It has $500 million in the bank (including $100 million in Unity SFB). “We have 4x the money in the bank than what we have spent so far to build BharatPe in the last 3+ years... we are still getting 2-3 new inbound conversation requests every week from funds looking to invest in us.
While we don’t need to raise capital for a foreseeable future, it is great to know that both existing investors as well as potential new ones are keen to further support us, if we need the capital,” he added in the communication to employees. Founded in 2018, BharatPe is targeting to reach $30 billion TPV on payments through both QR and Swipe by March 2023.