Ashneer Grover: Bitter BharatPe feud worries India's booming start-ups

The resignation of a high-profile Indian entrepreneur from the company he co-founded has led to worry in the country's booming start-up sector.

Ashneer Grover, founder of at least two unicorns - tech start-ups valued at over $1bn - resigned last week as managing director of BharatPe, one of India's most prominent fintech companies, after a public fallout with the board of the company he founded.

Mr Grover's abrasive behaviour as a judge on Shark Tank India - the Indian version of the reality show where aspiring entrepreneurs pitch their ideas to a panel of investors - had made him a talking point since December.

But in January, he came under intense media scrutiny after a leaked phone conversation led to allegations that he had abused a bank employee for failing to secure funds so he could invest in the public share sale of beauty start-up Nykaa.

Since then, BharatPe's board has accused him of misappropriating funds and siphoning off company money to pay for a "lavish lifestyle" - charges Mr Grover has denied.

In his scathing resignation letter, he accused the company's investors of making him the "villain of the piece".

"You treat us founders as slaves - pushing us to build multi-billion-dollar businesses and cutting us down at will," Mr Grover said in his letter.

The BBC spoke to corporate experts, who said Mr Grover's case - where there are allegations of fraud - is an aberration in India's start-up ecosystem. But it's only the latest in a series of ugly public spats involving the country's start-up entrepreneurs and investors.

A few years ago, realty search portal Housing.com's Rahul Yadav famously told his board that they weren't "intellectually capable" of sensible discussion. Since then, big start-ups such as Ola and Flipkart have seen founders battle investors for control.