The whole world, except his immediate family, is out to get him—that’s the recurring theme of Ashneer Grover’s maiden book, Doglapan: The Hard Truth about Life and Start-ups. The conspiracy theories throughout the book become a bit tiring after a while, and one starts wondering whether Grover has written the book just to project himself as this innocent, hardworking ‘Delhi middle class boy’ who has been shortchanged by almost everyone in the big bad world. Maybe it’s his way of pleading innocence in all the controversies that he has found himself involved in.
Grover spares none—the IIMs are nothing but just “placement schools”; working in Mumbai is like “reducing your life’s aspirations from having your first house in Borivali, then moving to Bandra and then to a cremation ground in South Mumbai”; and journalists are essentially operators “with no qualms and integrity and publish news fed to them for rewards”. It’s okay as everyone is entitled to his/ her views, but the bitterness of this highly successful start-up founder can be overwhelming.
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What makes the reading of the book a tedious job is that most of it is already known, courtesy Grover’s frequent tweets and the recent spat with BharatPe, of which he was the co-founder and managing director till recently. Special treatment has obviously been reserved for his erstwhile colleagues at BharatPe.
For example, BharatPe chairman Rajnish Kumar showed early signs of “wanting control” and to “make money out of BharatPe”. There were enough and more signs of this, “whether it was getting his Esops increased from Rs 2 crore to Rs 3 crore on the first day in office or asking me to get him free membership to the DLF Golf Course”. In the well-executed plot, Rajnish Kumar played him the longest, Grover says in the book. But Grover must be having a rather short memory. Just over a year ago, he had said in an official statement that “it is a matter of great validation and pride for us that one of the biggest stalwarts of the Indian banking industry has agreed to join BharatPe as the chairman of the board”.
The other co-founders have predictably not been spared either. Read, for example, the following: BharatPe CEO Suhail Sameer used to call co-founders Bhavik Koladiya and Shashvat Mansukhbhai Nakrani for drinking sessions to poison them against Grover. “Suhail detested Madhuri (Grover’s wife who has been removed from the company) because she saw through his nefarious designs early. Along the way, he was also insecure as I had informed him that a new CFO would be joining us soon, which he thought would clip his wings,” Grover writes.
The author claims he gave Sameer more Esops than anyone else had been given in Indian startups, “giving him Rs 11 crore of liquidity within a year, besides making him the CEO and even a director on the board. His payback, of course, was in the form of a betrayal.”
His rivalry with Pine Labs and its CEO Amrish Rau also finds mention, stemming from an argument they had in 2020 when Rau took pot-shots
at BharatPe on Twitter. “I decided to WhatsApp Rau to ask him why he was putting out these tweets. His reply, that we were spoiling the market and that there were people in the ministry who shared his views, irked me. ‘Ministry ki dhamki kise de rahe ho (Who are you threatening with the ministry)?’ I asked. I wrote to Sequoia in unequivocal terms that they should call off the dogs,” he recounts. This, Grover says, peeved Sequoia’s Shailendra (Singh), who, in turn, called Micky Malka (Ribbit Capital), to tell him that “I was becoming too big for my boots”.
The author and the publisher must be brave as the book has hit the stands just after BharatPe filed a civil lawsuit in the Delhi High Court for a Rs 88.6-crore fraud at BharatPe during his tenure. The company has also filed a criminal complaint with the Economic Offences Wing and arbitration to claw back Grover’s remaining shareholding.
Whatever be the truth in this sordid saga, the book reads more like a sob story of the author who was once lionised in the pantheon of India’s up-and-coming companies. There is no doubt that Grover shepherded BharatPe through successful fundraising, but he is perhaps taking too far the persona of a blunt, straight talker that he cultivated during the reality show, Shark Tank India.
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The title of the book—Doglapan (double standards)—is inspired by a term that Grover popularised when he was on the jury of Shark Tank India, and it’s obvious that he is now out to take off the mask worn by the glamorous investment bankers in Mumbai.
Ironically, the best part of the book is about his early life—his formative years in Malviya Nagar, a middle-class neighbourhood in Delhi where his grandfather built a house on a 200-gaz plot, through school, his education at premier institutes and his first meeting with his future wife at a coaching institute where he joined just because the “girls there were happening”. The man who always seems eager to project a larger-than-life image has no qualms in admitting how he “literally wept” after figuring out that he had blown his chances with the very first paper of the joint entrance exam. There is also this delightful story about Grofers, where he worked as CEO for a while, having to spend over Rs 25 lakh as lawyer fees to settle a case involving Rs 500.
There is no doubt that Grover has a massive fan following who would love to hang on to every word he says. However, chances are that many of them would get confused and may see his life as a cautionary tale of what happens when a talented leader picks up fights with all and sundry, and then takes on the world to prove his innocence.
Doglapan: The Hard Truth about Life and Start-Ups
Ashneer Grover
Penguin Random House
Pp 185, Rs 499
