Systems in place to prevent slips: BharatPe’s CEO Suhail Sameer

BharatPe will focus on changing certain governance practices, including how procurement takes place within the firm and improving compliance and transparency, the fintech company’s CEO Suhail Sameer has said. This comes on the back of Alvarez & Marsal submitting its final audit investigation report to the company board. In one of his first interviews post internal audits and the controversy over former managing director and cofounder Ashneer Grover who stepped down recently, Sameer also told ET’s
Tarush Bhalla that BharatPe has accelerated its plans to go public and will look to list on Indian bourses within two years. Edited excerpts:

There is an entire corporate audit exercise taken by the company. What are the findings and the corporate governance lapses found by the auditors?

Lapses is a strong word. I think there was zero lapse (by BharatPe) in any stated laws which the company needed to follow. The corporate governance review and the changes there of are more forward looking, and in line with our IPO in two years.

We are…strengthening the board and getting more independent directors. We are putting in place all the policies for approval around vendor onboarding, procurement, as well as conflict of interest.

The third thing we’re sort of doing is, putting in our own higher standard of ‘what is the conflict’. Many investment banks and consulting firms are not allowed to invest in certain types of companies. So, we are just putting in place something on where you can invest your in private capacity, what board positions can you take, what sort of outside of business interests can you have, etc.?

By your answer, it looks like the audits were preventive. What are the final findings from Alvarez & Marsal auditing the company?

A&M and PwC findings have been shared with the board and the exact nature of those is only privy to BharatPe’s board. They are a lot forward looking… I think there have been a lot made of it – siphoning off money, etc. But it is an employee gone wrong. We’ve learned from it, and we’ve put systems in place which hopefully will ensure that such incidents will not happen again.

What is the focus for BharatPe moving forward?

One focus for the business is to scale the merchant business. We will be launching one or two new products for merchants. We will double down our annualised total payment value (TPV) of $16 billion and cross $30 billion TPV by March 2023. Higher TPV allows us to cross-sell other products. We have touched $110 million in annualised revenue run rate. We will launch auto loans for merchants.

On the consumer side, we have 100 million users on PayBack. For PostPe, we have touched $50 million TPV last month, and look to exit this financial year at $200 million. We are focusing on an IPO in 18-24 months. We want to be profitable for the merchant business when we go public.

What is the issue with ‘12% Club’?


It’s an asset management product, and we were in the middle of a Covid-19 wave in January, and our NBFC partners were not disbursing loans. So, our partners suggested closing the window for investments till the asset liability situation at their end stabilises. The existing users continue to earn interest and you will start seeing us onboard new users by June.

There have been reports on BharatPe looking to claw back Ashneer Grover’s shares. There was also an arbitration filed. Where does the matter on Grover’s shareholding stand?

Whether there will be another legal battle, or clawback on shares is not my decision. It is the board’s decision and BharatPe’s board at an appropriate stage will decide on it. The only relationship BharatPe has with Ashneer is that he continues to be our shareholder. That’s about it.

What is the outcome of the GST (goods and service tax) probe? What have you heard from the officials?

The GST matter is obviously not closed yet. We want to be 100% compliant, and sure that we are not missing anything and are working actively with GST authorities. There’s no cause for concern, and hopefully the issue should be closed by the end of April.

Has the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) reached out to you, given it was keen to investigate the lapses at the firm?


We haven’t heard anything from them. So, I am not sure where these statements are coming from.

Why did the company narrow on A&M to be the interim CFO (chief financial officer), considering they also audited the firm?


This is not a conflict of interest, since these are separate teams within A&M. The interim person who is coming will be managing the day-to-day finance function. We met three to four firms who offer this service, and we chose the best. It will take us 4-5 months to appoint a permanent CFO.

There were also reports of employees leaving BharatPe. What is the company doing about it?


We are looking to drive more ownership amongst employees towards the business and ensure that every employee in the company has ESOP (employee stock ownership plan). We already have a good ESOP pool of around 7%, in spite of five major rounds of funding. We will look to expand the ESOP pool further by 2-3% by the end of this year.

When is Unity Small Finance Bank (a digital bank founded by BharatPe and Centrum Financial Services) expected to pay back the depositors of scam-hit Punjab and Maharashtra Cooperative Bank (that Unity SFB took over)?

The money from Deposit Insurance and Credit Guarantee Corporation (DIGC) came in last Thursday and the money was given back to whoever was eligible for it.