After Ashneer Grover And Satyam Nathani, Bhavik Koladiya Is The Latest High-Profile Exit From BharatPe

Fintech unicorn BharatPe continues to see an exodus of high-profile executives. The latest to head for the exit is Bhavik Koladiya, who co-founded the start-up along with Ashneer Grover and Shashvat Nakrani. 

In a statement released today, the fintech company stated, "Bhavik Koladiya has been associated with BharatPe as an Independent Consultant, guiding our Product and Technology teams. His contract tenure ended on July 31, 2022, and he expressed his desire to spend time on other assignments outside BharatPe. Bhavik has been one of our biggest advocates and has been an integral part of our journey in becoming one of India's largest fintech companies. While we wish him the very best, we are also sure that he will continue to guide us in the future as well, as and when we need."

Mint reported that Koladiya, who managed BharatPe's product and technology operations as a consultant, parted ways and severed his association with the start-up a month ago, citing "disagreements with the company's CEO (Suhail Sameer)."

Incidentally, earlier in June, another founding member, Satyam Nathani, also put in his papers. This came within days after other senior executives decided to move on. These included its Chief Revenue Officer, Nishit Sharma, and Head of Institutional Debt Partnerships, Chandrima Dhar.

The Fintech Cookie Crumbles

BharatPe closed its highest growth quarters when it facilitated over Rs 3,600 crore in loans in April-June 2023, which is a 112 per cent growth over the previous quarter. The fintech also claimed that it reached an all-time high of $18.5 billion in annualised total payment value (TPV), which was a 50 per cent rise over the last quarter.

However, while the company flouted these impressive numbers, it garnered more attention for the controversy surrounding the acrimonious exit of its co-founder, Grover . In March 2022, it alleged that Grover and his wife Madhuri Jain Grover had misappropriated and siphoned funds worth crores from the company's account. 

After several public spats, Grover departed from the company he had built. Incidentally, things had also soured between Grover and Koladiya.  

It all started when Koladiya was convicted in a credit card fraud case in the US before BharatPe was launched in 2015 . His conviction barred him from holding directorships in the US and made future fund-raising from foreign investors a tricky affair. 

He was removed from BharatPe parent, Resilient Innovation's cap table and his 30% stake was split between Grover and Nakrani. He took up the consultant role at BharatPe, helping build its tech backbone. However, his stake was further diluted as the company went for a series of funding rounds and got increasing support from several venture capitalists, and was estimated to be around 4 per cent in March 2022. 

Grover's and Koladiya's strained relations came to light when the former informed BharatPe's board in February 2022 about an 'expletive-laden' communication between the two. The duo also had an argument over the phone, and Grover's wife, Madhuri, tweeted the audio clip, only to pull it down later.