BENGALURU: Fintech firm BharatPe’s Co-Founder and MD Ashneer Grover has taken voluntary leave from the company till March-end. This comes days after an audio clip, allegedly of Grover, threatening a Kotak Mahindra Bank employee after missing out on Nykaa’s IPO.
However, Grover tweeted that the audio clip circulation on social media was fake. On Wednesday, BharatPe in a statement said, “Ashneer has co-built BharatPe from scratch and his decision is consistent with his passionate commitment to the future success of the company. For now, the board has accepted Ashneer’s decision which we agree is in the best interests of the company, our employees and investors, and the millions of merchants we support each day.”
It also added that BharatPe will continue to be ably led by its CEO Suhail Sameer and strong management team. In his statement, Grover said that he would return on or before April 1, 2022. “I’ve been relentlessly at work building up BharatPe for almost 4 years. I plan to take temporary leave of absence....I’ll be utilising this period to rejuvenate and refresh myself for our next sprint of value creation,” he said.
He added that he would spend the time thinking more deeply about the company’s next phase of product development, and BharatPe’s path to profitability and IPO. Meanwhile, BharatPe said that its ‘Buy Now Pay Later’ product, ‘postpe’, has emerged as one of the fastest growing products with an annualised TPV of `2,400 crore in just 3 months of its launch.