Former Zilingo CEO Ankiti Bose Alleges Sexual Harassment Against Co-Founder and COO

Ankiti Bose, former CEO of B2B fashion startup Zilingo, has filed a case of sexual harassment against the company’s cofounder Dhruv Kapoor and its former chief operating officer Aadi Vaidya.

A case was registered against the two men under sections 354 (A) and 354 (D) pertaining to sexual harassment and stalking, respectively, of the Indian Penal Code on Tuesday at the Kasturba Marg police station in suburban Mumbai. The Mumbai police are yet to summon Kapoor and Vaidya. Both the sections are non-bailable in nature and punishable with up to five years in jail.

According to the FIR, in March 2021, the two allegedly threatened Bose and sought sexual favours. “The two used to call at odd hours of night and threatened me that they would sack me if I don’t extend sexual favours to them and meet them in a hotel room. This caused me a lot of mental agony and stress,” the FIR reviewed by ET reads.

It also states that she was threatened against speaking about the company’s deteriorating financial condition.

In a statement, Kapoor termed Bose’s allegations against him as “completely baseless, untrue and malicious”. “A thorough investigation has already proven her wrongdoing based on which she was terminated from the company. This appears to be nothing but retaliatory behaviour,” he said.

“…As the chief operating officer, Aadi Vaidya engaged in misconduct by falsely attributing loss-making deals to me and extending trade credit to various parties in my name. He then used those deals to threaten me by falsely implicating me to investors, despite the fact that all operational dealings were conducted by him in my previous company. I have been threatened, deceived, and had errors attributed to me in order for Vaidya to fraudulently acquire my shares which are valued at multiple crores,” the FIR adds.

On the delay in filing the FIR, the complainant claims that while she was sacked in May 2022, in June of that year she herself resigned from her post, after which she took up a new job that kept her busy, and she didn’t get leave from work to file a complaint.

In April 2022, after alleged discrepancies were found in Zilingo’s accounting, the company suspended Bose as the CEO. Later in June that year, she resigned from the directorships at holding company Zilingo Pte Ltd as well as its subsidiaries, saying “opacity of information” with respect to her as a board member and a shareholder led to the decision.

The alleged discrepancies in its accounting were discovered at the time of a due diligence process for a new funding round, through which it was looking to raise $150-200 million at a valuation of $1.2 billion.

In May 2022, Zilingo commissioned Deloitte to look into the harassment charges levelled by Bose.

Bose, who worked with Sequoia Capital India (now Peak XV Partners) before launching Zilingo, had disputed allegations of accounting discrepancies against her, and countered her suspension. She had, at the time, termed the company’s action a “witch hunt” and hinted that it was triggered by harassment complaints she had raised against an investor in the firm.