Ms Bose’s silence has been misconstrued as a weakness and a pile of rubbish allegations have been thrown at her because “unnamed sources” with one sided narratives and half-baked information have been given way too much importance without proper evidence.
Please see our on record responses below and please note we are already in the process of taking legal action against several of the individuals who are trading this misinformation. We will keep you updated on the same strictly in good faith. Please attribute these to Ms. Bose’s spokesperson.
1. In the months after your suspension and termination you had claimed that your employment was terminated due to ‘insubordination’. Could you please clarify whether this is the only stated reason for the termination as per the official resolution received from the directors on the board?
Answered together with 2.
2. Please state the exact verbiage used in the termination letter ser ved to you by the board of directors which highlights the cause for termination. Apparently, there was a report used to terminate Ms Bose, to the best of our knowledge the findings of this report were the basis for the termination of Ms Bose’s employment.
Any information from inc42 on this is welcome as we do not have it. There was an appalling lack of transparency and failure to follow due process in the instigation of a malicious witch-hunt by the Zilingo board against Ms Bose. This witch-hunt involved the appointment of Kroll, supposedly by the company but in reality, based on documents sighted by Ms Bose’s legal representatives - this was commissioned by one single investor.
Despite multiple requests as an affected party, as a shareholder and a board member to have visibility on the contents of this report, Ms Bose has yet to this day sight this report.
Ms Bose would also like to point out that in the media maelstrom around the Zilingo matter, it has been completely ignored that Ms Bose has made clear complaints of malpractices, of sexual harassment, complaints against senior team members for various types of misconduct, breach of fiduciary duties and malfeasance which were not looked into to her satisfaction.
Several of Zilingo’s shareholders have confirmed to Ms. Bose’s representatives that these complaints were brushed under the carpet - many of them did not even know this was in the background the context of the matters unfolding at Zilingo. For avoidance of doubt, despite multiple requests Ms Bose or her legal
representatives have NOT even received a response to their request to see this report which was the basis of termination, or a confirmation for who paid for this report or who Kroll’s client was.
3. Please clarify the duration of your meeting with the board on March 31, 2022 when you were handed your suspension letter, as revealed to us by multiple sources. (answered together with question 4)
4. Please state the names of the other members of the board and / or shareholder group present at the meeting on March 31, 2022 when you were ser ved the suspension letter.
1. First of all, this was NOT a board meeting.
2. None of the usual corporate protocols and corporate governance was followed, none of the board protocols were followed.
3. Ms Bose received a cryptic whatsapp message to “catch up” in an unscheduled way the previous day.
4. There was no agenda circulated, and there have been no minutes of this purported board meeting circulated till date.
5. The attendees were 2 board members who were investors and 1 who was an advisor to an investor.
5. Please clarify the duration of your inter view with Kroll on May 04, 2022, as revealed to us by multiple sources. (Q 5,6,7 answered together)
6. Please clarify the number of meeting requests sent by Kroll to you or your legal representatives between March 31, 2022 and May 04, 2022 (Q 5,6,7 answered together)
7. Please state the names of other members of the board and / or shareholder group present at the inter view with Kroll on April 04, 2022. (Q5,6,7 answered together)
Please note, for avoidance of doubt, all the communications that took place between Ms Bose’s representatives, the Board’s representatives.
1. The Board and Kroll executives led Ms Bose to believe that Kroll had been hired by the company. In the 31st March meeting , the participants seemingly misrepresented to Ms Bose that Kroll had been appointed by the board to look into a whistleblower complaint made against her.
2. Ms Bose was told to sign certain forms where it was clearly stated that Kroll’s client was ONE single investor and not the company or its other shareholders. She obviously refused.
3. It is worth pointing out that Ms. Bose participated in these meetings under the false impression that Kroll was representing the company. Whereas this was demonstrably not the case. Ms Bose was lied to, and this entire process was completely lacking in any form of corporate governance.
4. When her legal representatives subsequently pointed out the utter lack of process being followed by the board, false narratives against her started being spread in the media, she was sent repeated rape-threats online by anonymous trolls.
Ms. Bose was continuously harassed and multiple breaches of her rights to due process and natural justice took place in the entire process as follows:
● First, it is telling that a copy of the original complaint has never been provided to Ms Bose, even though Providence Law (Ms Bose’s Singapore Counsel) had requested for a copy of the same as early as 7 April 2022.
● Second, the Company never gave Ms Bose a proper opportunity to answer these allegations. No CEO has any documentation at their home - she kept requesting access to her COO, Mr Aadi Vaidya who would be able to guide the team to the required documents and she was denied access to him repeatedly - one time even after she showed up to a meeting to resolve this and he did not.
● On 4 May 2022 at Ms Bose’s scheduled inter view with Kroll, she was asked questions relating to some of the Company ’s vendors. She was asked to justify the invoices which these vendors provided. She informed Kroll that those work products existed and could be made available to Kroll if she could get access to the Company ’s Finance Team or the vendors themselves, who would undoubtedly have a copy of their timesheets, deliverables and communications. A date was arranged for Ms Bose to attend at Kroll’s offices for the super vised access session. on 9 May 2022 at 3pm. When she arrived at the office, however, she was informed that the session would not be taking place. No replacement date for the session was offered to her.
● On 12 May 2022 at 2.32pm, She was asked to attend a meeting the next day at 10.30am for Kroll to present its “findings” in respect of the investigations. Bizarrely, approximately 20 minutes after that (at the point where Kroll’s findings had apparently already been finalised), the Company then forwarded a request from Kroll
for Ms Bose to produce the aforementioned documents that she had requested for super vised access to obtain within two hours. Needless to say, Ms Bose completely fails to understand how Kroll could have been in a position to present any “findings” when it had not even obtained the documents it had requested for yet.
● On 13 May 2022 at 5.02pm, Providence received an email from NLC, the Company ’s solicitors, requesting Ms Bose to attend an inter view with the Board at 5.30pm, i.e., less than half an hour from the time of that request being made. She would not even have been able to travel to the meeting in time. Such unreasonably short notice yet again reeked of bad faith and an utter disregard for proper process.
● On 14 May 2022 at 7.30pm (a Saturday), NLC emailed Providence to “invite” Ms Bose to produce a list of questions to Mr Dhruv Kapoor (co-founder), Mr Aadi Vaidya (COO) and Mr Venkat Narayana (Head of Finance) by 2pm the following day, which was a Sunday.
● On 15 May 2022 at 6.49pm (a Sunday), NLC emailed Providence to inform Ms Bose that she was to attend a super vised access session the following day at 10.30am on 16 May 2022 (a Public Holiday).
● On 16 May 2022, Ms Bose arrived at Kroll’s offices for the super vised access session. Despite the fact that she had explicitly stated in her list of documents that there were documents that were in Mr Vaidya’s possession, Mr Vaidya was not present at the session. Accordingly, there were multiple documents that could not be located due to Mr Vaidya’s unexplained absence.
● Later that day on 16 May 2022, Providence wrote to NLC to request that, given Mr Vaidya’s absence, we ought to be permitted to approach the vendors directly with specific requests for the said work products and supporting documentation. This was critical.
● On 17 May 2022, Ms Bose attended the meeting with 3 board members - under protest. At this point all of Ms. Bose’s rights had been stripped. No opportunity was even being given to Ms Bose to respond to any of the apparent allegations. Access to documents was being withheld. She had to be given anti-anxiety medication in the middle of the meeting due to continued harassment from one specific board member
Providence also reiterated that Ms Bose ought to be given permission to speak to the ZIlingo operations team and vendors to obtain a copy of the documents.
● On 18 May 2022 at 10.14pm, NLC emailed Providence informing us of another meeting the following day on 19 May 2022, 1pm. This was the seventh time the Company gave Ms Bose less than one day ’s notice to comply with a direction, and the third time that the said request had been sent by way of an email after hours. Providence replied on 19 May 2022 to state that the Company had yet to consent to Ms Bose request to obtain the documents requested by Kroll on 12 May 2022, and that accordingly, there would be no purpose to the meeting. Providence also stated that Ms Bose was unavailable at such short notice and requested for the meeting to be rescheduled to the following week after we had been given an opportunity to obtain the documents. The Company never responded to this, and instead terminated Ms Bose the following day (i.e.¸ on 20 May 2022).
● The manner in which Ms Bose was terminated from the Company on 20 May 2022 also speaks volumes. No meeting was arranged at all for the same.
● To make matters worse, the Company concurrently then released a press release where it stated that “Following an investigation led by an independent forensics firm that was commissioned to look into complaints of serious financial irregularities, the Company has decided to terminate Ms Ankiti Bose’s employment ” It should not go unnoticed that this report was NOT even commissioned by the company to the best of Ms Bose’s knowledge. Yet, the Company ’s press release sought to convey the impression that this formed the basis for termination. THIS REPORT MOST IMPORTANTLY WAS COMMISSIONED BY ONE SINGLE INVESTOR AND NOT THE COMPANY. Based on what we have heard, the Board again blatantly lied to the media and to Ms Bose.
● To this day, Ms Bose does not even have sight of the initial complaint that was apparently made to the Company by a conflicted complainant. She has requested this numerous times (including but not limited to emails on 6, 7, 12, 26, 28 April 2022), so that she can properly answer the allegations against her, but this has been refused / ignored.
However, it appears that the contents of this allegedly confidential initial complaint were in fact made known to the media. For example, Bloomberg cited several anonymous sources who had informed them that the complaints had been raised after “investors began to question [the Company ’s] finances as part of the due diligence process” – a claim that was new to Ms Bose, given that this was not what the investors had mentioned as the basis of the suspension on 31 March 2022, and given that none of the investors in the new funding round had specifically raised any questions to Ms Bose.
● To this day, Ms Bose does not have sight of the third-party report which purportedly formed the basis for her termination, despite her demand for the same since 20 May 2022 when apparently this report was used to terminate her.
● The opaque nature of the “investigations” conducted by the Company has gone so far as to exclude other shareholders from details regarding this process and its findings. This is illustrative of a witch-hunt and smear campaign against Ms Bose – to on the one hand provide her and other shareholders with as little information as possible in respect of her termination, but to release negative “information” to the media so that there would be widespread negative media publicity against Ms Bose in respect of the same.
8. Please share the findings of the Kroll report and exactly what financial irregularities have been highlighted by the auditor in this report.
Please share this report with us, as we do not have access to this report. Given the level of detail you seem to have, that seems to have been shared by your unnamed sources, we would really appreciate it if you could kindly share the contents of these reports with us. Ms Bose and her legal advisors have repeatedly requested to see these reports and not only have these requests not been assented to, but there has been no acknowledgement of these requests to date.
9. “ There is not a single payment made by Zilingo that did not have proper documents or either the finance, tech or operations teams were not aware of,” you told Bloomberg. Why then were you questioned by Kroll about financial irregularities, as informed to Inc42 by multiple sources. It appears to us that your source was in the room when these questions were being posed to Ms Bose, we would request you to kindly have them clarify:
1. Who commissioned the Kroll report?
2. Who paid for the Kroll report?
3. Where is the final report?
That might help us answer this question along with you as we are as much in the dark over here.
10 Please share the findings of the Deloitte report and exactly what discrepancies have been highlighted by the auditor in relation to claims of harassment at the
company
Please share this report with us, as we do not have access to this report despite numerous requests.
Given the level of detail you seem to have, that seems to have been shared by your unnamed sources, we would really appreciate it if you could kindly share the contents of these reports with us.
Ms Bose and her legal advisors have repeatedly requested to see these reports and not only have these requests not been assented to, but there has been no acknowledgement of these requests to date.
11. As per multiple sources close to the company and former employees, supporting documents related to the payments made to Ebix Cash in August and September 2021 or Onedelta Technology Ser vices (April 2020 to November 2021) were not provided to investigators from Kroll. Please clarify why this was the case.
Ms Bose was directed not to contact any staff at Zilingo or go to the premises. As stated clearly in the above paragraphs - Ms Bose requested the Kroll team to ask Mr Aadi Vaidya and his team to answer these questions as the board was not giving her enough access to company ’s documents to answer any questions. NO CEO has documents at home - they are stored by the employees/ management or at premises - it seems that Mr. Vaidya and his team were maliciously hiding information possibly in connivance with Mr. Dhruv Kapoor. Mr Vaidya repeatedly did not show up to any meetings even though the board representatives / investigators had promised Ms Bose that he would. Beyond that Ms Bose does not know why the company ’s management team or Mr Vaidya were hiding details from the investigators. This is not only true about these vendors but in fact ALL vendors, as clearly stated in our answers above.
12 Inc42 has learnt from several sources that you gave final approvals for payments to Onedelta (totalling over $2 Mn). Please clarify / comment
All payments at Zilingo, all USD 300Mn, not just the 2Mn of it - required Ms Bose’s final approval as a process. They were processed by the finance team.
13. Inc42 was informed by different sources close to the company that you gave final approvals for payments to Algo Legal (totalling around $7 Mn). Please clarify / comment.
All payments at Zilingo, all USD 300Mn, not just the 7Mn of it - required Ms Bose’s final approval as a process. They were processed by the finance team.
14. We were told by multiple sources that you gave final approvals for payments to Ebix Cash (totalling around $940K). Please clarify / comment All payments at Zilingo, all USD 300Mn of it, not just USD 940K required Ms Bose’s final approval as a process. They were processed by the finance team.
15. As per multiple sources, a bulk of the payment made to Ebix Cash (over 65%) was made even before a contract was signed between Ebix and Zilingo. These payments are said to have been approved by you. Please clarify. This is demonstrably false - so you have incorrect information.
16 Please clarify the nature of your professional relationship with Mr Sandeep Kapoor of Algo Legal.
Ms Bose was introduced to Mr Kapoor by Sequoia’s team in 2014.
Subsequently Mr. Kapoor represented Sequoia in Sequoia’s dealings with Zilingo between 2015 and 2019 - in fact to the best of our knowledge, Sequoia had requested Mr Kapoor to help set up the company on their behalf in 2015. Prior to Zilingo Pte it was in fact called Magnifa Investments - and it predates Ms Bose’s entrepreneurship journey.
Subsequently Mr Kapoor ’s firm represented Sequoia and both Sequoia and Zilingo in transactions between 2020 and 2022.
17. Inc42 has learnt from various sources that the payments to Ebix Cash as well as Onedelta were creating a parallel IT system and the testing of apps. Please clarify why this task was not managed by the Zilingo tech team
Ms. Bose confirms that she and Mr. Dhruv Kapoor had a huge falling out preceding the events of Ms Bose’s suspension.
Mr Dhruv Kapoor had without her prior consent decided to loan out money from the company to his “female friends” and the finance team had alerted Ms. Bose.
Ms. Bose confirms that she had discussed firing Mr. Dhruv Kapoor in 2020 and 2021 with several key stakeholders including the then head of HR.
It is to be noted that Ms. Bose had also requested a legal team as well as HR to
look into the actions of Mr. Dhruv Kapoor and Mr. Aadi Vaidya as this was happening while she was receiving depraved messages and emails pertaining to severe sexual harassment continuously from anonymous sources.
Ms Bose believed that Zilingo needed to be protected from Mr. Dhruv Kapoor and Mr. Aadi Vaidya as they were scheming against her in order to protect themselves from a variety of misconduct. But she was afraid of their potentially damaging actions so was carrying on her investigations in stealth.
18. Please clarify why the activity mentioned in Q. no 17 was not managed by the in-house tech team led by CTO Mr Dhruv Kapoor
Ms Bose wanted to have Mr. Dhruv Kapoor, terminated due to his performance issues and alleged moral depravity. Ms Bose and Mr Kapoor had a huge falling out as well several times with Mr Dhruv Kapoor cunningly working against Ms Bose and the company ’s interests. Ms Bose had discovered several damning emails that laid bare Mr Dhruv Kapoor ’s nefarious intentions. Ms Bose confronted Mr Dhruv Kapoor leading finally to a severe altercation in 2020 itself
19. Please clarify whether Mr Dhruv Kapoor was aware of the third-party vendor working on this IT system
(Answered along with 20)
20. Please clarify the nature of the parallel IT system that sources say were the reason for the payments to Onedelta as well as Ebix Cash
Yes. In fact, several of Zilingo’s functions, not only these, were being outsourced and a lot of layoffs had taken place to clip Dhruv Kapoor ’s wings and power at the company. Ms Bose had insisted on firing a lot of his team and probably why he chose to gang up on her for revenge.
Mr. Aadi Vaidya was in fact leading the charge on almost all operational matters at that point and Ms Bose believed it was mission critical to stop Mr Dhruv Kapoor from destroying the company from the inside - which in our opinion he anyway successfully managed to do anyway
21. Sources have informed Inc42 that Zilingo made payments of close to $7 Mn to Algo Legal through the course of 2020 and 2021 on your approval. Please clarify the reason for these payments
As mentioned in detail to Bloomberg , this included several payments to auditors and vendors in India and to deploy teams safely without Mr Dhruv Kapoor attempting to damage the company as in the opinion of many, he was attempting to do so.
Not only 7 Mn - all 300 Mn of expenses and capital raised did go through Ms. Bose’s approval as per process but finally only processed by Finance.
Mr. Vaidya and the finance team from the company have had access to all pertinent information but so far have seemingly refused to provide it to us or seemingly to the investors too. This shows their potentially malicious intent and potentially wilful connivance yet again.
22. Inc42 has learnt that the payments to Algo Legal were for the creation of a legaltech application. Please clarify and comment on why Zilingo took up this activity
This is not correct. Zilingo’s India team and business, helmed by Mr Dhruv Kapoor and operationally helmed by Mr Aadi Vaidya had lots of issues pertaining to processes, audits and GST etc. Mr Dhruv Kapoor and Mr Aadi Vaidya were summoned several times by authorities and said lawyers and many other consultants have represented them on this as well - as far as we know All of this documentation is available with the company
23. We have been informed that Zilingo’s costs associated with legal fees saw a significant increase from 2020 to 2021, with secondment fees in particular seeing over 2X increase. Please clarify the nature of Zilingo’s terms with Algo Legal which explains the extent of these secondment fee payments
Zilingo’s internal workforce had shrunk from nearly 900 people to 300 people over time and a lot of support functions were outsourced. By outsourcing , the company had cut nearly 70% of its fixed burn too. Allegedly, Mr Dhruv Kapoor had mentioned to his colleagues that he was frustrated with Ms Bose’s stern approach towards him and allegedly wanted “revenge”. Ms Bose did think that the threatening emails had something to do with all of this.
24. Inc42 has been told by several sources close to the company as well as former employees that many of the invoices raised by these companies have been cleared within a day Was this standard practice for payments authorised by you?
Invoice clearing follows a strict process and only and only the finance team as Zilingo was at discretion when to do this.
Ms Bose had no direct access to clear any payments. All payments, not just these would have been authorised by Ms Bose but the clearing process wasn’t controlled by any C-suite executive.
25. Sources told us that investors were provided separate numbers for revenue by the company Please explain this discrepancy
This is patently false and has been clarified many many times. In B2B businesses, there is the booked revenue and realised revenue. Latter always trails the former as the delivery process takes 30-90 days.
26. Sources told us that certain revenue was reassigned from the enterprise business to the long-tail business at your direction in March 2022. This resulted in total revenue more than doubling for the year Please clarify the reason for this change and how this
Nothing happens at any one person's direction. We received proper financial advice that transactions by small merchants could not be categorised as Enterprise segment and the recognition of these management metrics was in fact rectified in the second approach so perhaps your source is either misleading you or doesn't have a clear understanding of the accounting principles that were followed in implementing this change.
27. Sources told us there have been grave discrepancies in revenue reported for FY21, particularly an unexplained wide gap between booked and final revenue. Could you please explain exactly how Zilingo was recognising revenue at this point of time?
Booked revenue - was always on the basis of bookings made. Due to covid related delays shipments were stuck and subsequently the realised revenue turned out to be lower or realised further out. This was duly disclosed subsequently. This department was also managed by Mr. Aadi Vaidya, the COO and not the CEO.
28. Sources including former employees at Zilingo have alleged that you expensed personal expenses such as flight tickets for family to Singapore from India to the company ’s books? Please clarify this
This is patently false, everyone used the same travel agent which is one of the largest ones and paid for it through personal accounts - in fact Ms Bose’s personal credit card was also on file which should be in the records of the company.
In fact it was alleged to several key stakeholders that it was Mr Dhruv Kapoor who was the main individual who had conducted “personal expenses” such as trying to “loan money ” to his female friends. The documented evidence of this was also provided to key stakeholders subsequently.
Mr Aadi Vaidya also had a relationship with an ex-employee who eventually left the company. After she left the company they got married, however while she was at the company the relationship was not allowed and broke several rules. There were several expenses and behaviours which Ms Bose had flag ged and there
are documents with our legal representatives that will reveal this.
It is frankly embarrassing that these gentlemen and investors say they are “female friendly ” .
29. Sources have alleged that Zilingo entered into a contract with CAA in the US for the company and Ankiti Bose’s branding and PR for $2.5 Mn. Please clarify the terms of this contract and how it contributed to the business growth.
This is patently false and the contract with CAA and the company was clearly to develop the Enterprise sales business. CAA was also to introduce several potential clients to the Enterprise business and help grow the business in the western markets. This contract had absolutely nothing to do with Ms. Bose. The proper documentation of this exists with the company and they should be able to provide it to you. We can say on record that any other version of this is patently false.
30. Please clarify why your salary grew from SGD 5.5K in 2017 to SGD 58.9K in 2019, when the company had seemingly yet to report any profits. No, it did not - this is laughably false. Ms Bose was on the highest pay cut and made a lot less money in 2021 than 2020 or 2019. Mr Vaidya on the other hand was granted over USD 20 Million dollars of majority fully vested shares - an anomaly by all means.
31. Please clarify why a board of directors resolution was not sought before the above salary increase.
As expressed before, Ms Bose has no access to the company ’s official documents, minutes of board resolutions at all.
32. In comparison to the 10X growth in the CEO salary, we have been informed that the COO saw a 7X growth, while the CTO only saw a 3X hike in salary Please clarify why the salary of COO Aadi Vaidya and CTO Dhruv Kapoor did not see a commensurate increase as that of yours as CEO
There was no 10X growth in CEO salary - in fact Ms. Bose was on a 30% pay cut as earlier clarified and proper documentation exists with the company for this.
In fact there was a large growth in CTO salary of Mr Dhruv Kapoor who not only took a salary in India but also in Singapore which he did with no consent from investors.
Perhaps your source has failed to mention this.
Mr. Vaidya’s salary has actually increased the highest as he received an 8X salary increase and was granted almost USD 20 Million+ of stock options - NEARLY ALL FULLY VESTED! as opposed to the measly numbers before. Kindly press your sources for the right facts - It was Aadi Vaidya who made the disproportionately highest gains in that time.
33. Please elaborate on the allegations of lack of action for sexual harassment claims raised by you as per your claims in the weeks and months post your suspension and eventual termination of the company We still await the slightest acknowledgment that this was a matter that was duly taken up with proper seriousness by the company Ms Bose was given to understand that a Deloitte report had been commissioned to look into the complaints and like with all commissioned reports it seems that report has also never been shared with us so we are really still waiting for a response.
34. Please clarify whether you engaged any agency for social media management and PR management post your suspension from Zilingo No agency was hired by Ms Bose.
35. Inc42 has seen at least 1000 social media posts in the weeks after your suspension from Zilingo where the issue was highlighted through similarly phrased posts. Please clarify whether you directed agencies or marketing firms to engage in social media campaigns in your support in the days and weeks after your suspension and subsequent termination.
The only parties capable of hiring agencies at that scale are institutions - from our understanding it requires lots of people and resources etc.
Inc42 surely has also then seen more than the 10,000 posts made and deleted against Ms. Bose with severe rape threats which led to the Singapore Courts granting a Expedited Protection Order to her Does inc42 give more credence to random online reports or to the Courts and lawyers?
For avoidance of doubt Ms. Bose never hired any agency Whereas she was a victim of depraved harassment at the hands of trolls hired by agencies.
Ms. Bose believes that there were several elements at play on all sides that might have tried to benefit from her on-going rift with her company
Ms Bose’s representatives have in fact been told by several journalists that a large media agency ’s Indian office was hired to actively lobby against her at the behest of 2 female individuals working for a large investment firm in India. We think it is well known who they are.
36. Inc42 has seen at least 1000 social media posts in the weeks after your suspension from Zilingo where investors were blamed through similarly phrased posts. Please clarify whether you directed agencies or marketing firms to create a campaign directed against Zilingo investors in the days and weeks after your suspension and subsequent termination
Again, the type of actions you are insinuating are usually managed by large corporations. Ms Bose, who was hospitalised 3 times and harassed multiple times online and by the process unfolding was barely in a condition to keep up with the games that were being played by her board. She was hardly associated with any agencies for avoidance of doubt, she did not hire any marketing agencies.
37. Independent research by Boom Live indicated that a paid campaign was orchestrated against Sequoia India in this case. Please comment. Ms Bose has no way to know what actually happened.
38. Did you share classified information with representatives of the press by sharing legal notices sent by your legal team to Zilingo and its board/shareholders? “Classified information”seems laughable - is it something akin to state secrets? We are not sure we follow your question. Your “sources” are clearly privy to more information than us on “classified matters” such as the “Kroll report ” that we have never even had sighting of We are happy to share whatever should be shared at the right stages of this processin fact, on that note, please watch this space.
39. Please respond to allegations heard from various sources around your management style which resulted in employees working in a culture of fear 39,40,41 answered together
40. We have been informed by sources that in one instance you asked senior leaders to dismiss an employee who asked questions during a townhall meeting. Please comment
39,40,41 answered together
41 Several former employees claim to have operated in fear around you, with some calling your management style dictatorial. Please comment
It is striking that phrases being attributed to Ms Bose’s management style are seldom, if ever used to describe male startup founders in being a young driven, female leader with a strong vision for herself and her company ’s future. Ms Bose was willing to hold herself and therefore her colleagues to the highest of standards. Ms Bose has done absolutely nothing wrong and is sick and tired of being torn down by malicious propaganda.
The constant maligning of Ms Bose’s professional integrity and management style due to these lazy sexist biases is a sad reinforcement of the headwinds that every female founder has to fight against on a daily basis.
42. Despite allegations of harassment and wrongful termination, you are yet to file a lawsuit against Zilingo or the board members. Please clarify the reason for this
We think the question to ask is instead how she has managed to keep herself together in the face of brutal paid media and social media barrage, threats of mental and physical harm, threats of rape.
This is not to say she has precluded any avenues of legal recourse but the past few months have been a period of tremendous trauma and turmoil amidst all the maliciousness directed at her. Even when the men in tech are morally depraved, somehow the women are paying the price of it. But again, watch this space for more. Ms Bose has chosen to speak up now so this will not be the last you hear of her.