Update: Read Part 2 here. Also, the crisis has ended: details here Update: A video recording of one face-off between the politicians and Choudhary is up here. TinyOwl co-founder Gaurav Choudhary is being held hostage at the company’s office in Pune by employees who have been laid off. Choudhary, 24 years old, has been unable to leave the office for the last day and a half, and the situation is grim. At the TinyOwl office, which MediaNama visited yesterday and today, chaos reigns. Yesterday, upon entering the office, we found a group former employees gathered around in a cluster, discussing developments angrily, while some were taking printouts and others were writing on the whiteboard. They remained unaffected by members of the police force walking in and out of cabins. Choudhary was nowhere to be seen. In the above image: "Don't trust IIT'ns" “They say the F&F (Full and Final settlement) will be sent within 45 days, but how do we trust them when they haven’t paid the previous employees?” one employee asks me, adding, “We have a mail from the HR saying that F&Fs won’t always get settled within 45 days.” Some of the employees present at the office are from the previous round of layoffs which took place on the 31st of August this year. In the current round of layoffs, employees were told that the Pune operations were being shut down, and that they needed to follow up with TinyOwl’s Mumbai office for settlements on the 2nd of November. Our query about whether…
