Insider news of investors initiating forensic audit in the company owing to defaults in vendor payments for several months and alleged misappropriation of capital raised. Fiasco 7/n in the startup ...

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Insider news of investors initiating forensic audit in the company owing to defaults in vendor payments for several months and alleged misappropriation of capital raised. Fiasco 7/n in the startup investment ecosystem this year

Forensic audit initiated in Bigspoon (cloud kitchen startup)

Investor

Forensic audit initiated in Bigspoon (cloud kitchen startup)- Grapevine

Welcome to News Discussion's Private Community

Dealshare funds have been blocked from use. Something major off.

Founder

After GoMechanic, now Mojocare is said to cook its books. Is this a trend? and which other companies are showing similar signs?

GoMechanic, Now Mojocare

Content Strategist

This seems like the Founders and the Head of Finance were together doing fraud. Founders are throwing the Head of Finance under the bus once they have been caught. Does anybody know what went about?
https://inc42.com/buzz/accel-mooofarm-police-complaint-finance-head-alleged-embezzlement/

Any gossip on Mooofarm (Accel backed dairy tech startup) fraud?

Project Manager

Recently a fraud has been exposed at MooFarms wherein the Head of Finance is blamed to have siphoned around INR 10cr, while he has registered an FIR against the founders for taking out the money by inflating the vendor invoices. What is your take, who can provide the insight?

Fraud at MooFarm

Product Owner

- Since SEBI’s order in January, over 5K+ investor-partners have not received their instalments from Growpital.
- The company has laid off almost all employees, reducing headcount from 100+ to less than five, and the website is shut down.
- Growpital allegedly ran the CIS scheme illegally and made fake projections for a future IPO.
- Vineet Gupta, a confectionery store owner, and his wife Anjali have not received payouts, affecting their child's education.
- SEBI froze INR 50 Cr in bank accounts, and legal actions are being considered by affected investors.

Growpital’s Investment Model Leaves 5K+ Investor-Partners in the Lurch

Journalist

What an absolute shit show
https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/technology/fraud-threats-sexual-harassment-zilingos-ankiti-bose-files-fir-against-co-founder-ex-coo-12706929.html

Zilingo CEO files FIR against COO & CTO

Zilingo is already defunct. A once billion dollar startup that is now literally 0. 
One of the major startup scams. Investors just kept lapping up the GMV growth.

And now when everything is over, co-founders filing FIRs against themselves.
Disappointing.

My only appeal to everyone: please call out if you're at a startup that's doing similar stuff. A lot of careers can get saved...

Corporate Strategist

Product Manager

India's darling agritech startup Fasal is in bad shape. As new round of funding is not progressing as planned, vendor payments are delayed.

Fasal's financials in bad shape. Vendor payments delayed.

Picture speaks a thousand words

Software Engineer

Welcome to Confessions's Private Community

I was into a founder’s office. Working closely with the leadership team of a funded Agri-tech startup (Which shall strictly remain anon in this post)

Does it happen to others the same way as it did to me?

I was one of the first FOs in the org and I was trying to figure what is up with this startup.

About 21 days in to company, I was helping a co-founder with a report that has to go out to investors.

I open up the metrics dashboard to enter numbers when he said “he knew the figures by heart”, so we began entering metrics like GMV and others. These were 5x of my range.

I said we should just double check ? He said there are factors in the formula that I have not considered at all and I finish the report as per the numbers he gave me.

Confused, I later dared to ask the lead PM how are we computing GMV. And told him about my dilemma to tell the founder we need to just double check his calculations.
Bless my naiveté.

He had a nervous smile and told me we report numbers that keep the startup exciting and afloat. We will catch up very soon with them.

The next morning, the founder also took me for a meeting and explained how doing this is important for everyone in the company to succeed.

I was very scared but lived in an autopilot of nervousness for 6 months. Part-took in it while being scared of going to prison myself.

I felt a terrible dread in my stomach in every interaction with with the admin and CA teams since in my first interaction I came across what I sensed to be a big fake bill. Was I blind to miss everyone in the office get a new chair the last month?

I never asked doubts on the money numbers the CA team gave me. But had reasons to doubt it basis other business data I had access to.

Everyone seemed to be on the same kind of auto pilot, good people who had never done anything wrong before this as far as I knew. Everyone considered leaving the culture and toxicity every week. 

The day I left, I had the email of the investors of the company since I’d emailed them countless decks and reports. I really wanted to drop an anonymous email revealing what I knew to them but I was afraid of the following repercussions to my career and I let the matter go.

Reporting fake GMV and more

Looks like you had a ‘Haat’ time working there

Recruiter

Investment Associate

Welcome to Office Gossip's Private Community

What made it worst? The pay, the culture, or your manager?

What's the worst company you have worked for?

ICICI Bank, they had a strict sign in timing policy where if you are late to corporate office, half day salary would be cut, It would be reversed only when manager approves. The sign out time used to be 5.15pm, but you would be made to sit till 8 pm by most of the managers even if your job is done for the day. A sign out at 6 pm used to be called as half day by most of the managers. 
 I heard now they donot have this dictatorial policy.

Data Analyst

How is this startup Rigi ? Heard they're doing 40-45Cr GMV/month and Profitable.

Program Manager

And founders themselves embezzling more than 45Cr

So problematic. Allegations of 90% revenue being fake

Paytm is becoming the Enron of India with so many allegations of fraud and compliance issues.

Paytm might've committed forex fraud

Software Developer

Swiggy Folks, Spill the tea!

Consultant

Investors are pulling the plug. The startup is winding down. Chaotic scenes inside.

Fampay is fucked

First the audit report got delayed. Now they’ve reported a loss of over 4.5k cr. And I believe they’re like a mothership of edtech, if they gone down then the entire category goes down from an investment perspective

What’s happening with byjus?

I was speaking to an ex-colleague and he mentioned how my previous employer, a lending startup, has been intentionally over-reporting disbursal numbers and under-reporting delinquencies in portfolio.

They conveniently chuck the NBFC partners who dare to ask questions and instead catch new fish. During my time I saw sales staff committing rampant frauds and making money on the sides from users. The founders conveniently turned a blind eye till there was new business coming in. They've seemingly moved on to the next level now.

The founders have top pedigree and already come from well off families. Makes me wonder how many such skeletons are buried across startups and what leads to such behaviour. Especially in the wake of what we saw with GoMechanic, Zilingo etc.

Frauds at startups

Business Operations

Reason given by investors on Mojocare sounds very fishy. At one end they are blaming the founder for embezzlement while on other end they are blaming market conditions and unsustainable business model for the layoff of employees. Doglapan?

Rebel foods Pvt Ltd (formerly faasos), which became unicorn has done layoffs in tech and product. ( We have no idea about kitchen staff layoffs) 
The number of people let go forms a considerable % of the total strength

Beware of joining such startups! They will surely name this as "performance" based removal, but what do you have to say for firing freshers you hired not even 6 months ago?

Forensic audit initiated in Bigspoon (cloud kitchen startup)

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Rebel Foods Pvt Ltd, (formerly Faasos) has done layoffs