Nervousness grips startup founders, acknowledge need for timely disclosures after Bansal’s exit

BENGALURU: Binny Bansal’s exit from Flipkart on Tuesday for alleged personal misconduct is expected to have broader ramifications for India’s startup culture. Several startup founders TOI spoke with following the Bansal episode said they have had conversations with their co-founders and mentors about the need for tighter governance and making fuller and timely disclosures.

Some are now more sensitive to the equation that founders and senior executives at startups share with women colleagues. While the ‘#MeToo’ movement also had impacted the startup ecosystem, Bansal’s exit has brought the issue much closer home for fellow entrepreneurs. Among male founders, there’s a sense of insecurity. But female founders TOI spoke with said the conversations happening now will lead to a healthy change over the long term. Most of the founders who spoke did not wish to be named.

“The recent developments can change the fundamentals of how startups function internally, especially in companies that have founders as young as 25,” a founder said.


He said that while greater sensitivity in workplace behaviour is good, the same should not be taken out of context to implicate founders at some point in the future. Other founders too said they are being cautious about workplace behaviour with women but are worried about a “casual joke” coming back to haunt them later.

“We have a fairly well balanced team in terms of sex ratio and are having these dialogues around workplace behaviour now more than ever. We have also discussed about better standards of governance and making sure that all the key stakeholders are aware of standard disclosures,” another founder of a startup said.

In Binny’s case, the internal investigation did not find evidence to corroborate the complainant’s assertions, but the company said it revealed “other lapses in judgement, particularly a lack of transparency, related to how Binny responded to the situation”. It is believed that Binny did not disclose anything about the complaint against him when Walmart was doing its due diligence of Flipkart prior to acquiring it.

Much like major global startup hubs, India’s startup ecosystem too is male dominated. Shreya Mishra, co-founder of Flyrobe, said there may be a sense of insecurity among some men over the startup culture, but that should not be the core concern right now. “Instead, we should look at how many women have gone through these issues. And it’s about time we take corrective measures, at the cost of some feeling uneasy about that casual joke, if need be,” she said.

Another woman founder of a startup said men need not be scared over their day-to-day interactions with female colleagues.

“But the current chain of events will lead to better awareness among all stakeholders,” she said.

Sanjay Swamy, managing partner at seed-stage venture fund Prime Venture Partners, said the fund constantly has discussions with its portfolio companies to build awareness about these issues, and ensures they create systems to tackle them.