Early stage VC firm Artha Venture Fund has initiated the removal of the cofounder and CEO of Kolkata-based blockchain startup Hornet. The firm’s managing director Anirudh Damani took to social media platform X to share that the investor has exercised shareholder rights to remove the CEO of a portfolio startup. According to Damani, Hornet’s cofounder and CEO Souvik Haldar engaged in governance breaches, including allegedly diverting seed funding proceeds for personal expenses. He further claimed that Haldar took up paid external employment with one of the startup’s clients while using company resources, and copied sensitive company data onto personal devices. “When this was found out, he tried to destroy evidence, threaten employees… and copied the entire code base of the company, including active investigations that were ongoing with law enforcement agencies that were conducting their work through his platform onto a hard drive and then taking that hard drive off company premises,” he said. Founded in 2023 by Haldar, Subhrojyoti Mondal and Shreyan Gupta, Hornet is an Indian cryptocurrency forensics and intelligence platform designed to track and analyse illicit activities on the blockchain, such as fraud, money laundering, and darknet transactions. It claimed to be working with multiple government agencies… Read MoreInc42 Media
