Ravi Gururaj’s Venture QikPod Runs Into Legal Hurdle Over Equity Issues

Qikpod, founded by serial entrepreneur and one of the most well-known faces of the Indian startup ecosystem, Ravi Gururaj, seems to have run into some trouble with a fallout between Ravi and Neeraj Ray, who was being considered for a role in the startup, over ownership issues.

Neeraj has filed an injunction suit against Qikpod, accusing Ravi of not giving him the promised equity in the startup. A Bangalore civil court has passed an interim order, which as per Factor Daily, refrains Ravi’s venture from either “allotting or issuing new shares in the company”, or from “commercially launching the Meralocker Qikpod product during pendency of the suit”.

The interim order stated, “The contention of the plaintiff is that due to his innovative ideas he had important portfolios and he invented a product which would serve delivery box or locker for stoic packages delivered by the e-company such as Amazon, Flipkart, etc., and he named the product as Meralocker.”

Ravi meanwhile has approached the Karnataka High Court, which has given an interim stay on the trial court order and asked Neeraj to present his case on June 3. As per a statement made by him,

“The case initiated is a false and frivolous case and the allegations made and reliefs sought are false and unsustainable. We have, already, approached the Hon’ble High Court of Karnataka at Bangalore, challenging the ex-parte ad-interim injunctions granted by the Hon’ble Trial Court. The Hon’ble High Court was pleased to grant an interim order of stay; which in effect, allows us to proceed with the launch of our ‘QikPod’ product. I would like to make no further comments on the merits of the matter, as the same is sub-judice. In any event, as things stand, the commercial launch of our ‘QikPod’ product will proceed as planned.”

So while the courts take their own sweet time to come to a conclusion, QikPod, will continue to work on its mission to set up a network of intelligent lockers for delivering ecommerce parcels to online shoppers across the metros.

Launched last November, QikPod had raised $9 Mn in seed funding from Accel Partners, Flipkart, Delhivery and Foxconn Mobile, making it one of the largest seed round fund raising in India. Initially starting from Bangalore, Ravi plans to build the world’s largest parcel locker network with over 50,000 lockers across all major metro cities in India.

The case is again one of the common challenges which startups face – fallout between founders and team at early stages due to misunderstanding over expectations or due to lack of proper fit in the startup environment.

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