Fashion tech firm Zilingo's co-founder Ankiti Bose
Ankiti Bose, a co-founder of the fashion technology company Zilingo in Singapore, has filed a defamation lawsuit against prominent angel investor and co-founder of Seedfund Mahesh Murthy.
Sources with knowledge of the matter say that Mr. Murthy's article in the March 1 issue of Outlook Business magazine is what sparked the legal action.
Mr Murthy charged Ms Bose in the article with illegally taking money from a startup.
Ankiti Bose was reportedly suspended by Zilingo in April 2022 as a result of several claims of improper behaviour made by unnamed insiders in the organisation, according to Inc42.
According to HT Media, Mr Murthy didn't name Ms Bose in the article but offered various descriptive pointers. Referring to founders who took money illegally out of their startups, it mentioned "one lady" who "ran a popular fashion portal and took Sequoia's money".
"She got her firm to pay her lawyer some Rs 70 crore as fees and-it is rumoured-got a lot of that amount directly back to herself as her cut," Mr Murthy alleged.
"The fact is, there was no evidence presented to me; there was no report presented to me. There were just a lot of media statements and a lot of unnamed sources saying things, but nobody (else) saying anything directly on record," she said.
Ms Bose said that the $100 million was computed by calculating, among other things, her balance of equity in Zilingo and taking into account "the losses that statements like this can affect future endeavours."
However, the complaint was filed on April 20 and is currently in the pre-admission stage.