The recent marital spat over an online marketplace has become a hot topic of discussion in the startup world. ShopClues founder Sandeep Aggarwal had filed a defamation case in a Delhi court earlier this month, making certain allegations against his wife Radhika Aggarwal and co-founder of the company Sanjay Sethi. The couple’s bitter separation and the ongoing tiff are the main cause behind this step.
The board of e-commerce company released a statement on Tuesday:
“We are proud of the fantastic progress made by the ShopClues team under Radhika & Sanjay’s leadership. The company’s differentiated business model and capital efficient approach has enabled it to become a market leader and has grown 30 times under this management."
While the board now backs Radhika Aggarwal and Sanjay Sethi, they are unhappy with Sandeep Aggarwal for taking his personal matters online. The statement further reads, "It is very disappointing to see an ex-founder, who disassociated from the company for his criminal wrong doings, is now engaged in a personal vendetta on a public forum. "
WATCH She’s Building India with Shopclues: Meet Radhika Aggarwal
Those of you who didn’t follow the news, Aggarwal had an emotional breakdown and without thinking of the consequences it may bring about, he took to Facebook and posted an outrageous note on Sunday, alleging that his wife was having an illicit affair with the co-founder. He also blamed his wife for taking away all his credits for the company. He added that even that his ‘voting rights’ are stolen and that he hardly gets to see his kids.
In reply, Radhika wrote back that it was a joint effort by all the co-founders that had successfully placed ShopClues where it is today. However, Sandeep does not accept this fact, Indian Express reported.
The board, while defending their nature of goodwill in the company, went on to say,
"Our goal is to create value for all stakeholders and we remain focused on working closely with Radhika & Sanjay and the management team to continue to scale the company as it captures the massive opportunity which lies ahead of us.”
In her statement, Radhika Aggarwal has said, “I was disturbed by her husband's social media posts. ShopClues was built through team effort,” Economic Times reported.
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The Facebook post reads (which was later deleted):
“When people start calling themselves co-founders and start lying about the formation of a company, its history, its vision, and main brain behind it, those people prove themselves how non entrepreneurs they are in their demeanor and that they are at best highly insecure and below average executives who got lucky once. These people have no substance and in this lifetime they can never be entrepreneur. They are just glorified employees similar to many MNCs have, who can bullshit!!!”
A day later, Sandeep’s press team issued a statement:
“Sandeep has been wronged on multiple counts by people he trusted the most. He is deeply hurt and while he stands by each and every word, he regrets having made the emotional outburst and using public media to express it. He lost the love of his life, ShopClues, and hardly gets to see his kids and that took a toll on his emotions…”
Following the dignity of work culture that Sandeep had maintained by exposing personal matters in public, Radhika in a statement criticized Sandeep’s posts.
“I am shocked by unfounded and baseless allegations being made. In the interest of privacy of my family I will not be commenting on any personal matters, however, ShopClues was always a team effort and by God’s grace and hard work of a strong team, ShopClues has become a force to reckon with and I want to focus my time and energy to do what I owe to my employees, my investors, my country and myself,” she said.
According to PTI, ShopClues has completely denied the defamation cases filed in court.
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Established in 2011, ShopClues started with four co-founders – Sandeep Aggarwal, Sanjay Sethi, Radhika Ghai and Sudhir Ghai. In 2013, the FBI put Sandeep Aggarwal behind bars for securities fraud in the United States of America. After this, Sandeep left ShopClues formally and was only a consultant for it. Meanwhile, the co-founders of ShopClues entered the ranks of India’s best e-commerce space after raising fund of excess of $1billion last year.
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Today, ShopClues is worth over $1 billion.
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