To an ITC case: From Ashneer vs BharatPe’s board of directors to an ITC case. How can Shwetank Jain be in two hot soups at the same time?
At the same time, co-founder Ashneer Grover and his wife Madhuri Jain are in many court fights about BharatPe’s money problems. Still, Shwetank Jain has been named in a new lawsuit.
Board members at BharatPe ordered an audit that had already been leaked. It found irregularities in hiring and raised questions about payments to non-existent vendors. All three of BharatPe’s top financial officers, Madhuri Jain, Shwetank Jain, and Deepak Gupta, her brother-in-law and BharatPe’s chief of administration and procurement, were allegedly involved in the company’s financial misdeeds, reports say. This is not true.
In a new case brought by the International Trade Commission, Shwetank Jain, one of the directors of Tappiserie Lifestyle Pvt. Ltd., has been named as a defendant (ITC).
Remember that Ashneer Grover and Madhuri Jain both took time off because of the controversy over Grover’s alleged use of derogatory language toward workers at Kotak Mahindra Bank, so they did not have to go to work.
ITC charges against Madhuri and Shwetank Jain, a sister and brother duo. The jury is still out on claims made before that were not true, though.
To be clear, this is not a problem with BharatPe at all.
The International Trade Commission says that Tapisserie Lifestyle makes the Hash Gold cigarette brand, which looks like a direct copy of the ITC’s Gold Flake cigarette brand.
First, it was BharatPe, then ITC. Shwetank Jain got into a lot of trouble because of some different things.
In the beginning, there was a dispute between the Panipat Jains and BharatPe.
Panipat, which is 95 kilometres north of Delhi, isn’t just famous for its history, and it’s also known as the “Textile City.”
He is one of the city’s most well-known businessmen. Suresh Jain has made and sold bed linens and other home goods in his hometown for almost 20 years.
In the beginning, Suresh Jain’s business was a small-scale store. He has now grown it into a fully functioning, one-stop-shop for home furnishings, called “Shivalik Furnishing.”
A woman named Jain is 59 years old. She has two girls and a son. Priya Jain is married to Deepak Gupta, and Shwetank and Pooja are married. Madhuri and Ashneer Grover are also married to each other.
Is it possible to believe the Alvarez & Marsal report? In that case, Madhuri and Shwetank, the brother-sister duo, and their brother-in-law, Gupta, are deeply involved in suspicions of fraud. He is also the brother of Madhuri and Shwetank’s husband, Gupta, who has been charged with a crime.
Madhuri Jain was a member of the BharatPe board of directors for a short period from July 2018 to November 2018. She is now the group head of controls at BharatPe. Deepak Gupta is in charge of the company’s administration and purchasing, and he works there.
Alvarez & Marsal audit images that were allegedly leaked on February 4, 2022, show that BharatPe made payments to some non-existent suppliers and spent money on non-existent vendors.
Directorate General of GST Intelligence (DGGI) searched BharatPe’s headquarters in October 2021 and found over INR50 million worth of payments to 30 fake suppliers.
This isn’t the only thing the DGGI did. They sent BharatPe a summons. The firm asked that the show-cause notice be dropped, saying that it had agreed to pay down the debts and any penalties that came with them.
Gupta was the one who signed the letter to the DGGI.
It looks like the screenshots in the study also show that the corporation didn’t fight the demand for service tax and reversed input credits worth about INR10 million while also paying an extra fine of INR1.54 million.
A screenshot from the report shows that BharatPe was paying a few million dollars to a few human resource consultants. The bills for these consultants came from Shwetank Jain and were approved by Madhuri Jain, who was in charge of the company. Based on screenshots, it looks like five workers joined the company on the date the vendor invoice said they did, but the workers say they didn’t get hired through recruiters.
Looking at the screenshots of the report that have been shared. BharatPe, on the other hand, says that it hasn’t yet received the final message from Alvarez & Marsal, which should arrive any day now.
Putting the integrity of the BharatPe board of directors or the integrity of individual board members in question repeatedly through false claims is very upsetting. In all its decisions, the board has done what is best for the company by following the correct rules. A statement from the company said, “We strongly encourage everyone to keep the governance review and board meetings private and to keep them safe.”
As of the time this storey was written, Madhuri and Shwetank had not responded to emails sent to them.
Ashneer Grover didn’t say a word when asked what he thought about the movie he saw.
There is a friendship between the Grofers and the Grovers.
Unlike Deepak Gupta and Madhuri, Shwetank, who is 31, does not have a job at BharatPe and does not work for the company in any other way. In 2014, he started his own business with the help of his family’s home furnishings business.
Tapisserie Homes Pvt. Ltd. is part of his family’s furniture business, and he worked there with his father and another person, Anshul Jain, from April 2019 to January 2020.
When Shwetank and Saurabh Sengupta formed 90Minutes Retail Pvt Ltd in April 2015, they owned 50% of the company and were the only two directors. This company was called 90Minutes Retail Pvt Ltd, and Saurabh was its CEO.
Afterwards, Sengupta stepped down and was replaced by Suresh Jain, who also took his place on the company’s board of directors. He sold his stake in the company in November 2016.
When the father-son team was on the board until November 2017, they each had 50 per cent of the company. Later, they sold their shares to Nirbhai Singh and Dinesh Bohra, who took over the company.
90Minutes Retail was one of three companies identified by Grofers India (now Blinkit) as large sellers who sell products on its platform to comply with India’s foreign direct investment (FDI) regulations in February 2017. Grofers India, which changed its name to Blinkit, said that 90Minutes Retail was one of three big sellers who sell products on its platform to meet India’s foreign direct investment (FDI) rules.
It was interesting that Grover worked for Grofers as their chief financial officer until August of this year.
Community Retail Pvt. Ltd., a company that was started by Shonak Sharma and his father, Pawan Kumar Sharma, in June 2016, was also chosen as the third option for buyers.
The father and son team were the only directors and shareholders of the company until September 2017, when they sold their shares to Balwinder Singh Sarao and his wife, Harjit Kaur. They bought the shares from the father and son team. In this case, they took over as directors and shareholders of the company.
A brother-in-law of Ashneer Grover’s sister is Phonak Sharma. Phonak Sharma has married the daughter of Ashneer Grover’s sister.
Ashneer Grover didn’t answer the questions
Not only did Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas recommend Grofers India’s FDI structure, but also approved it. Sequoia and Tiger Capital, as well as DST Global and SoftBank, also agreed with the structure.
Over 250 sellers, distributors, and merchants use Blinkit as part of Grofers India’s business, a rep for the company told ET Prime. “We don’t keep track of who owns what in our ecosystem,” the spokesperson said.
Shwetank Jain started the direct-to-consumer cigarette brand “Let’s Hash” with his sister, Madhuri, in 2020. It was Shwetank Jain’s big break after years of working in the family business.
In August 2021, his business got a lot of money from a group of people interested in it. This is how it worked: The Amrac Investment Trust was in the lead. As well as Cred founder Kunal Shah, Jupiter creator Jitendra Gupta, Ankur Jain, Grover and other members of the Jain-Grover family were also there.
According to business documents with the Registrar of Companies, Shwetank owned a controlling interest in the firm as of March 2020. (RoC). Madhuri is the second-largest shareholder in the company, after Shwetank. The rest of the shares are owned by other stockholders.
As for Tapisseries Lifestyle, the equity infusion from the angel round that happened in August 2021 would have changed everything about how the company was owned at the time.
The corporation has not yet filed its most recent shareholding pattern for 2020-21.
According to RoC papers, the company earned over INR39 lakh in sales during 2020-21 but suffered a net loss of more than INR6 lakh during the same year.
The ITC storey continues.
Tapisserrie Lifestyle is being sued by India’s biggest tobacco company, ITC Limited, for advertising the Hash Gold line of smokeless tobacco.
Besides Golden Tobie Private Limited, the case also named Delhi-based Golden Tobie Private Limited one of the defendants. Tapisserie Lifestyle is listed as selling and owning the trademark Hash Gold in the ITC’s application, and Golden Tobie is listed as the person who makes it.
Their Hash Gold cigarette, made and sold by both companies, is a direct copy of their Gold Flake cigarette. It has the same packaging, branding, and design as its Gold Flake brand.
According to the International Trade Commission’s application, the packaging’s colour scheme, logo design, and overall appearance and feel are strikingly similar to Gold Flake’s. Trade channels in the New Delhi area are used by both Tapisserie Lifestyle and Golden Tobie, which both sell their goods. Golden Tobie and Tapisserie Lifestyle want to profit from Gold Flake’s good name by using a trademark that looks a lot like their own, so they can.
Trademark infringement and unethical business practices are also against the law in this case.
Tapisserie Lifestyle’s lead investor in the angel round is Amrac Advisors Private Ltd. This is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Amrac Advisors Private Ltd, and it is linked to Lemon Electronics’ Kapil Chugh and Yogesh Chugh. Amrac Advisors Private Ltd also owns the company that makes mobile phones.
edited and proofread by nikita sharma
