Allegations of verbal and physical misbehaviour have surfaced against Mahesh Murthy, a known figure of venture and angel investor community in India.
More than two women have spoken openly about their instances of sexual violations made by Murthy, 13-14 years ago. Murthy clearly denied the allegations.
He called the allegations “not only false but also very old”. He said he has filed a case of defamation in the Delhi High Court against “specific defendants.”
Interestingly, it is also said that Seedfund Advisors LLP, a company where Murthy is still a managing partner also knew about his inappropriate behaviour with women who came to for a professional meeting. However, the firm claims to have not received any complaint or did not have proof to take action against him.
Notably, in February, Wamika Iyer accused Murthy of alleged misconduct. Her story was carried by many media houses, however, couldn’t be proved independently. Additionally, as per Factory Daily– allegations of not inappropriate behaviour but also gestures of physical touch has been slammed by Rashmi Bansal, an author and well-known speaker on entrepreneurship.
“I take any allegations of impropriety seriously and have retained legal help on similar stories published in February. Before I start, my lawyers, also copied on this mail, ask me to tell you the following (in italics): I have already filed a suit in the Delhi High Court and sought reliefs against specific defendants (who happen to be known to you and Sharad Sharma) as also to “Ashok Kumar” (which is in the nature of seeking a John Doe order i.e against members of the public at large) in respect of publication of certain defamatory allegations against me. The suit also refers to members of the public conspiring to do so,” Murthy said responding to Factory Daily over an e-mail.
Bansal’s allegations are based on incidents that happened to her in the year 2003 and 2004 within a gap of six months. “I felt cheap and violated and disgusted,” she said.
Bansal and Murthy got in touch with each other 13 years back via Ryze, an online networking platform launched in 2001 and with around 100,000 members by 2004. Months after the primary interaction, Murthy had invited Bansal to discuss professional matters. Soon he started to get personal discussing his marriage being ‘open’. After this, he shifted next to Bansal to sit close to her and inappropriately touched her, she said.
Not only was Murthy’s behaviour verbally inappropriate he also tried to physically violate her by touching her. Shocked Bansal left quickly after things got awkward.
“Oh, and it’s certainly strange that she or you should choose to air them now, 13 or14 years later,” says Murthy said in response.
When asked what took her more than 13 years to come out in public she said, “I saw him doing this to other people and people like Wamika who’s hardly in her twenties. I mean she’s a young girl, obviously didn’t approach him for that purpose and she went through the same shit,” she says, referring to Wamika Iyer’s complaints that surfaced in February this year. Murthy responded to the charges that have surfaced in the past few months (and an incident dating back to 2007) in a Medium post titled “The confessions of a serial offender.”
Meanwhile, another woman named Anamika who had moved to Mumbai in 2003 claimed that she was also approached by Murthy on Ryze network asking her to respond to him “since he was an influential, cerebral writer,” in the same year.
She also claimed to have been inappropriately touched by Murthy as they met after the exchanging messages on Ryze.
Responding to the issue, Seedfund’s founding partners said that they do not endorse or condone behaviour Murthy is alleged of.
“I think there’ve been two instances where I had to do Facebook posts saying that we (Seedfund) have nothing to do with it… Maybe 2013-2014 is when they (LPs) saw the first of that behaviour, and our message to them was that it has been dealt by the Facebook post. But till (you have) proof you can’t do much,” said Pravin Gandhi, one of the three founding partners at Seedfund. Bharati Jacob, another founding partner of the venture too expressed regret over the incident.
