Top technology entrepreneurs and startup founder including Vijay Shekhar Sharma of Paytm, Bhavish Aggarwal of Ola Cabs and former Infosys Director T.V. Mohandas Pai have written an open letter to Home Minister Rajnath Singh to express their concern about the manner in which Yogendra Vasupal (Yogi), co-founder of Stayzilla was arrested.
The letter posted on a website ' help-yogi.com ' has been signed by 73 entrepreneurs including Shivakumar Ganesan of Exotel, Vinod Muthukrishnan of CloudCherry, Harshit Agarwal of AppKnox and Amuleek Singh of Chai Point.
It said the founders are standing up together as a community and are believers in the vision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi for ‘Startup India Stand-up India’. They call for a free and fair investigation into the dispute and strongly oppose any abuse of power to subvert the law of land.
“We humbly request you to look into this matter and ensure that expeditious justice is provided to Yogi (Mr.Vasupal),” said the letter. Mr. Vasupal, the chief executive of the online homestay aggregator was arrested last week in Chennai on the charges of non-payment of dues to its vendor Jigsaw Advertising.
The letter said that when Mr. Vasupal was walking on a Chennai street, a couple of cops in plain clothes drove past, snatched his mobile phone and asked him to come to the police station. It said that they assured him they were aware of all the intimidations from Aditya C.S., owner of Jigsaw Advertising. By the time he reached the police station, things changed.
“He started getting pressurised to confess to 'a crime' he never committed. His refusal to confess to a crime he never committed only made the things worse for him,” said the letter.
The letter said that the Stayzilla case and its locked-up founder underscore the hardships of being an entrepreneur in India. It said that the question is not how this will affect entrepreneurship today, but how young Indians looking to become entrepreneurs in the future will give up even before starting up.
The letter said that one can find as many technical flaws and loopholes about a client-vendor contract (which, by the way, can be contested in the long term), and go roundabouts regarding how “an innocent" vendor was forced to “abuse, intimidate and even send voodoo dolls with the picture of entrepreneur's kids,” said the letter.
In a blog post on Medium, Mr. Vasupal of Stayzilla had claimed that he and co-founder Sachit Singhi were ‘under duress’ from authorities. He had alleged that he was being threatened by Jigsaw Advertising and a politician, who was their landlord. The blog post contains images of a black magic doll, which was sent to Mr. Singhi with the picture of his son placed on it.
“The point is, all this appears to be a Bollywood nightmare, and unlike the movies, there are no real life superheroes to fight the battle,” said the letter.
The letter has also been copied to top ministers such as Nirmala Sitharaman, Minister of State for Commerce and Industry, Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami.
The letter has asked questions such as whether Mr.Vasupal had syphoned away money or was running away from any enforcement agencies and has he ever threatened and visibly intimidated the vendor and his family?
“If the answer is none of the above, then why on earth has he been locked up in jail for a week, away from his wife and two children?” said the letter. It said that Mr.Vasupal has not had a bail hearing despite being jailed for seven days. The letter added this already had global repercussions and besmirched India’s reputation in Silicon Valley and elsewhere.
