In India, a Founder Detained for Days by Axed Employees, and Police

Screen Shot 2015-11-05 at 1.56.56 PMWell that was . . . different.

Last night, one of six cofounders of TinyOwl, a two-year-old, Mumbai, India-based food ordering software startup, was released after reportedly being held captive for two days by disgruntled former employees at the company’s office in Pune.

TinyOwl had earlier this week announced $7.67 million in fresh funding from earlier backers Matrix Partners and Sequoia Capital. But the funding came with the understanding that TinyOwl would follow through on a major restructuring to control its burn rate.

Part of those changes, reported the Economic Times, involved moving TinyOwl’s order processing to a third party app. According to Media Nama, they also included plans to lay off 112 sales employees across India in a second massive round of layoffs. (In September, reportedly, the company had separately laid off100 employees.)

As part of that restructuring plan, the company is shutting down its operations in four cities, including Pune. Which leads us to what happened to company cofounder Gaurav Choudhary.

Choudhary had traveled to Pune earlier this week to oversee the office’s closure, while his fellow cofounders – all of whom are graduates of IIT Bombay — traveled to sites in Gurgaon, Chennai and Hyderabad to do the same.

More here.


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