SINGAPORE: Ms Ankiti Bose, the co-founder and ex-CEO of Zilingo, has filed criminal complaints against two of her former colleagues at the fashion start-up, the Times of India reported on Wednesday (Apr 24).
Ms Bose pressed charges of cheating, intimidation, conspiracy and harassment against her fellow co-founder Dhruv Kapoor and the company's former chief operating officer Aadi Vaidya, according to the newspaper.
In a six-page complaint reviewed by the Times of India, Ms Bose alleged that Mr Kapoor and Mr Vaidya had misled her and the Singapore-based company's investors while attempting to gain financial advantages.
She also alleged that they "coerced her into relinquishing her shares and business under false pretences", it added.
This took place between April 2020 and 2022, Ms Bose said in her complaint.
In April 2022, Ms Bose was suspended as the company's CEO following an investigation into the start-up's accounts after complaints about alleged financial irregularities were raised. She was fired a month later.
In his role as COO, Mr Vaidya "engaged in misconduct by falsely attributing loss-making deals to me and extending trade credit to various parties in my name", the Times of India reported Ms Bose as saying in her complaint.
"He then used those deals to threaten me by falsely implicating me to investors, despite the fact that all operational dealings were conducted by him in my previous company," she continued
"I have been threatened, deceived and had errors attributed to me in order for Vaidya to fraudulently acquire my shares, which are valued at multiple crores."
The term "crore" denotes a value of 10 million in India, with 10 million rupees being the equivalent of about US$120,000.
Mr Kapoor and Mr Vaidya also exhibited "sneaky and shady" behaviour by concealing company-related information, Ms Bose claimed, adding that this made it difficult for her to make informed decisions.
The pair also "intentionally did not attend meetings" with financial adviser Kroll, which had been hired to conduct a forensic audit to investigate the complaints made against the company.
Their absence "further complicated matters for me and disrupted the other team members", Ms Bose said.
In statements released on Wednesday, Mr Kapoor and Mr Vaidya said that Ms Bose's claims are "completely baseless" and untrue.
"A thorough investigation has already proven her wrongdoing based on which she was terminated from the company. This appears to be nothing but retaliatory behaviour," said Mr Kapoor.
Mr Vaidya said that Ms Bose's allegations "seems like nothing but a clear afterthought done with a malicious intention to harm my reputation and harass me".
ZILINGO'S TROUBLES
Founded in 2015, Zilingo initially aggregated small fashion retailers in Singapore, Bangkok and Jakarta.
The firm then moved on into the business-to-business space by providing supply chain capabilities to fashion merchants.
By September 2017, the company was reportedly shipping to eight countries with seller hubs in Hong Kong, South Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia and Thailand, and had added 5,000 new merchants to its platform.
During its fourth round of funding in 2019, Zilingo raised US$226 million from some of the region's most prominent investors, including Temasek Holdings and Sequoia Capital India, the regional arm of the Silicon Valley firm that backed Apple and Google.
It lifted the company's valuation to US$970 million – just shy of the US$1 billion mark that categorises start-ups as unicorns.
Later that year, Zilingo announced that it would spend US$100 million to expand into the United States and establish offices in New York and Los Angeles.
However, cracks soon began to appear, with Zilingo's board increasingly concerned about the company's financial performance and profligate spending.
According to a Bloomberg report, the US$226 million Zilingo had raised from investors in early 2019 was gone in less than two years.
The firm also did not file annual financial statements, which is a basic requirement for all businesses of its size in Singapore, for two years – 2020 and 2021 – and the COVID-19 pandemic also buffeted Zilingo's revenue.
In January 2023, the Economic Times reported that Zilingo had sold its tech assets to Swiss e-commerce management software provider Buyogo, along with its Sri Lanka-based acquired entity nCinga Innovations.
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/bus...inal-complaint-against-co-founder-coo-4288486
