Anand Rai, the promoter of QuickDel Logistics Pvt. Ltd, has filed a criminal case with the Economic Offences Wing against Snapdeal founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal for criminal breach of trust, cheating, intellectual-property theft, theft of trade secrets and criminal misappropriation of securities.
The move comes barely two weeks after Rai shot off a Rs 300-crore legal notice to Snapdeal and its founders.
VCCircle has a copy of the complaint that alleged that Bahl and Bansal had stolen confidential information, including employee data, service vendors and their service levels and “Snapdeal illegally applied the same at their 100%-owned entity Vulcanâ€.
QuickDel Logistics, which runs third-party logistics firm GoJavas, was acquired by Rai, who is also the promoter of Pigeon Express Pvt. Ltd, in August 2016. Snapdeal held a 49% stake in GoJavas when the firm was aqcuired.
Rai’s complaint comes just about three months after Snapdeal’s parent Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd filed a case against the former GoJavas promoters, Praveen Sinha, Randhir Singh, Ashish Chaudhary and Abhijeet Singh, for alleged cheating, forgery, conspiracy, criminal breach of trust and misappropriation of funds.
When contacted by VCCircle, Rai alleged that Snapdeal founders had unduly benefitted from the sale of GoJavas.
Snapdeal first became a minority investor in GoJavas, incorporated as Quickdel Logististics Pvt. Ltd, by picking up a 20% stake in the company for $20 million and entering into a supply-chain partnership with it.
The deal was announced in March 2015. The GoJavas version of the story is that Snapdeal had approached its promoters through founding member and COO Vijay Ghadge in late 2014. The business partnership at the time of investment entailed Snapdeal providing 190,000 packages per day for delivery.
By October 2015, Snapdeal had upped its stake in Gojavas to about 42% by investing another $20 million. Ghadge said the partnership with Snapdeal had helped the company become one of the largest independent logistics players in the country with a revenue run rate of Rs 500 crore.
Other allegations are that Snapdeal used GoJavas to run tests, such as 90-minute reverse pick-up and swipe on delivery, and siphoned off money to the tune of Rs 100 crore by raising fraudulent debit notes.
A Snapdeal spokesperson, however, told VCCircle in an email response that the attempts by s Quickdel Logistics run contrary to the “release and settlement agreement†dated 31 March 2017 signed by it. “All these allegations were baseless and nothing but an uninformed and frivolous attempt at extortion. We will initiate strict legal action in this regard.â€