Ashneer Grover wanted Salman Khan. The company he worked for had about ₹100 crore in the bank, and the actor's fee was around ₹7.5 crore.
He has told the story on stage himself, at a Lovely Professional University talk in April 2022: the haggling, the manager who needed convincing, the number sliding to ₹4.5 crore. In 2019, a small payments company called BharatPe got its brand ambassador. It was classic Grover, loud, confident and willing to spend before anyone could tell him not to.
It was classic Grover, loud, confident and willing to spend before anyone could tell him not to.
He was born in Delhi in 1982, the son of a chartered accountant and a teacher. He went to IIT Delhi, spent time in Lyon on a French Embassy scholarship, and finished an MBA at IIM Ahmedabad in 2006. Then came Kotak, American Express, a stint as CFO at Grofers, which he left in 2017 saying promised ESOPs never arrived, and a job at PC Jeweller. That last one, he says, planted the idea for BharatPe.
The company's origin is less simple than his legend. Business Today, drawing on regulatory data, reports it was incorporated in March 2018 by Bhavik Koladiya and Shashvat Nakrani with a capital of ₹1 lakh. Nakrani, then a young IIT Delhi dropout who had earlier built a haircut-booking site, had called BharatPe his brainchild. Grover joined by taking shares transferred from them and held nearly 32 per cent by July 2018.
What worked was an interoperable QR code that charged merchants nothing. Valuation went from ₹1.9 crore at the seed round to roughly ₹20,000 crore in August 2021, with Tiger Global leading a round of about $370 million.
Then it came apart. In early 2022 the board began a governance review into alleged financial irregularities, and Grover resigned on 28 February. He said he and his family had been vilified. Years of lawsuits followed, with accusations, an arbitration plea and a 2023 petition against him. On 30 September 2024, both sides settled, the cases were dropped and his shares moved, in part, to a trust.
BharatPe carries on under CEO Nalin Negi, with FY24 revenue of ₹1,700 crore and a profit of ₹66 crore. Grover moved on to television and a book called Doglapan.
Founders should notice the order of events. The brand ambassador, the confidence and the valuation came first. The governance and the relationships had to catch up afterwards, and did not.