On Wednesday, an IT associate at BharatPe wrote on LinkedIn that he and other staffers had not received their salaries for March.
“We were with BharatPe ever since the company started and now we are nowhere because of your internal politics,” Karan Saraki wrote, tagging BharatPe CEO Suhail Sameer and cofounders Ashneer Grover and Shashvat Nakrani.
Responding to the post, Grover wrote, “Folks please look into this. Not done — their salaries have to be paid first before anything,” tagging head of financial control at BharatPe Hersimran Kaur and Sameer. His sister Aashima Grover also joined in, describing BharatPe’s top management as a “shameless bunch”.
The conversation took a turn when Sameer responded, “Tere bhai ne saara paisa chura liya (your brother stole all the money). Very little left to pay salaries.”
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The comment drew an immediate backlash. “I can’t believe a “CEO” of your stature answering with such brazenness,” wrote Binod Acharya, a business manager. “I feel like you’re trying to score some personal points here trying to be sarcastic or ironic.”
Sameer later apologised for his message.
“Friends – 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 [settlements] being paid out. My comment was a reaction to a particular statement, not the post. But I accept the mistake. I request you to also have patience, and refrain from building a story based on false narrative,” Sameer wrote.