Indian-Origin CEO Who Fired 900 On Brutal Zoom Call In 2021 Now Demands His Own Job Back

In December 2021, Vishal Garg, an Indian-origin chief executive of an online mortgage company, faced immense criticism after firing about 900 employees over a brutal Zoom call. Fast forward nearly five years, and Garg has now been fired from his job and is demanding that he be reinstated in his role. Garg was released on August 3 as the CEO of Better Home & Finance and replaced by Daniel Lewis.

Garg said Lewis 'hoodwinked' him by claiming to like the company's strategy on social media and using it to get the board and win their confidence. Lewis, a hedge fund manager, approached Garg six months ago with ideas about cost savings and good ideas about delivering profitability.

“[Lewis'] thoughts about cost savings were good. His ideas about innovation were not,” Garg was quoted as saying by CNN. “It's so much easier when we're this close for someone to come in and say that they could have done better.”

On July 27, Lewis was brought to the board, and a week later, he had convinced the other directors to terminate Garg as CEO and name him the new leader.

“I suspect he always wanted to become CEO,” said Garg. “The board made a mistake.”

Not willing to throw in the towel, Garg has hired Alex Sapiro, a high-profile lawyer and partner at Quinn Emanuel, to represent him. In a letter to the board, Garg demanded that he be welcomed back to the company as CEO.

“It's an acknowledgment that I've been doing this for 10 years, but execution hasn't been perfect,” Garg said. “I hope it gets resolved. I think the future still remains very bright for Better.”

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Garg's Brutal Zoom Call

In 2021, Garg explained that market efficiency, performance, and productivity were the reasons behind the mass layoffs. The fired employees made up about nine percent of Better.com's workforce. Among those fired were the company's entire diversity, equity, and inclusion team.

At the time, he had also accused about 250 terminated workers of stealing from the online mortgage company by over-reporting their working hours,