BharatPe's co-founder Ashneer Grover has accused the company's other co-founder Bhavik Koladiya of stealing data of around 150 million UPI users through the BharatPe app, Moneycontrol reported. On February 6, Grover levelled these allegations in an email to the National Payments Council of India (NPCI) and Kaushik Dutta, BharatPe's independent director. Allegations made by Grover: "BharatPe has so far processed billions of UPI transactions at merchants and in turn was privy to data of more than 150 Mn UPI users in the country. The data of transacting user was obtained at BharatPe using APIs with Yes Bank, Federal Bank and ICICI Bank," Grover said, as per Moneycontrol. After Koladiya founded his new company OTPLess, he transferred all the privileged and confidential data from BharatPe to his new venture, Grover said, according to Inc42. BharatPe is a customer of OTPLess. Grover said he was informed about this by whistleblowers within the company. He also accused Koladiya of poaching BharatPe's engineering team to OTPLess. In his email, Grover requested the NPCI to conduct a forensic audit of the BharatPe and OTPLess. He also asked NPCI to investigate the management of BharatPe to check if they hold any shares in OTPLess, according to Inc42. In response to these allegations, Koladiya told Moneycontrol, "I strongly deny the baseless and false allegations made against me by Ashneer Grover. The allegations are nothing but an act of retaliation and frustration on his part, resulting from his removal from BharatPe and my ongoing legal suit against him…
