Deepti (name changed on request for anonymity) was visiting home for Durga Puja last October when her phone beeped with the familiar sound of a new WhatsApp message—it was her work group.
Her manager at had sent a list of employees who would soon be fired from the agritech startup. As she scanned the message, Deepti found her name. She was upset but not surprised.
Trouble had been brewing at work since June 2023, and every now and then managers would inform employees that their name had been added to “the list”. “If your name is there (on ‘the list’) expect a call soon from the HR (human resources),” one of them would say.
But what surprised Deepti was the terms under which she had to leave. She claims that she is yet to be paid her salary arrears for August, September and October—the months she worked without pay before being fired.
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ReshaMandi, founded May 2020 by Mayank Tiwari and ex-Cisco employee Saurabh Agarwal, is a B2B silk agritech startup that links farmers to consumers. The farmers sell yarn to the company which is then sold at the marketplace, with ReshaMandi pocketing a margin of the sale. The company also expanded into the D2C space with its own line of products.
Inc42 had on June 19 written about the upheaval at ReshaMandi and the subsequent challenges faced by the startup.
YourStory spoke to several former employees of ReshaMandi who, under conditions of anonymity, shared their agony and the problems they faced following what they allege were forced terminations. This article aims to chronicle their struggles and issues.
The former employees allege that the management informed them in June 2023 that there would be a delay in salary payments for three months. However, the company assured that payments would be normalised once it raised funds.
Interestingly, according to market data website Tracxn, the company raised $5.6 million in a Series A funding round led by Creation Investments and Omnivore in the same month, which valued it at $74 million.
Instead of the situation stabilising, a round of layoffs soon followed, according to one of the employees. What the employees didn’t know then was that this would be the first of many.
In November, matters took a strange turn. Some employees claim that they received a choice from ReshaMandi—join a new company or lose their jobs.
Anil (name changed on request for anonymity) was among the few asked by the company to join a new entity called Genzr, based in Noida. A copy of the offer letter has been seen by YourStory, and the job profile was similar to his work at ReshaMandi.
These employees claim that they were also promised that any remaining salary dues would be paid in the form of a joining bonus if they signed the letter. Their only other option—lose their jobs.
But Anil claims that ReshaMandi never kept its promise of paying these employees the entire salary arrears.
It didn’t take long for things to turn sour at their new jobs, either.
While in his hometown to attend his uncle’s funeral, Anil had little idea of the nasty surprise awaiting him back in Noida.
On June 3 this year, he received a call from Genzr, asking him to either resign on his own or be terminated. He claims that Genzr hinted during the call that he would find it difficult to receive his full and final settlement (FNF) if he was terminated by the company.
Left with no choice, Anil travelled back to hand in his resignation. He received an email on June 5, 2024, from Genzr accepting his resignation.
Employees claim multiple senior employees, including ReshaMandi’s Human Resource Director, now hold leadership positions in Genzr.
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However, Genzr and ReshaMandi deny any association with each other.
“There is no association or carrying from other businesses on the running of Genzr,” Genzr said in a statement.
ReshaMandi’s response was similar: “We do not have any association with another business…namely Genzr”.
Meanwhile, back at ReshaMandi, a group of employees who had yet to receive their salaries from last year requested a meeting with the management, which was attended by the company’s senior executives.
It was at this meeting, which was held early this June, that the employees realised that there was little hope for them receiving their salary arrears, says one of the ex-employees who attended the meeting.
After the meeting, the employees filed a legal complaint in the labour court against Shapos Services Private Ltd, ReshaMandi’s parent company, where Tiwari and Agarwal hold positions as directors. The complaint alleged that the employees were wrongfully terminated and not paid for their work.
In a conversation on laws protecting employees at the workplace, Minu Dwivedi, Partner at JSA Advocates and Solicitors, says that the practice of employers unilaterally paying employees reduced salaries is both illegal and in bad faith.
“If you have engaged people for work and they are doing the work, in return you are required to pay what is duly owed to them, regularly, on time and without any unauthorised deductions,” she says.
If a company breaches the employment terms agreed with employees by not paying them the agreed salaries, the employee can raise a complaint internally or approach the concerned labour authority under the applicable state-specific Shops and Establishments Act or the Payment of Wages Act, or engage a lawyer to serve a legal notice on the company or file a suit against it, Dwivedi adds.
Although startups have some privileges in terms of self-certification and exemption from inspection for 3 to 5 years, they are subject to statutory obligations of making timely payment of salaries to their employees in full and without any deduction other than permissible deductions. Hence, if an employee of a start-up is not being paid his monthly salary, legal recourse against the employer is available to them.
<figure class="image embed" contenteditable="false" data-id="548101" data-url="https://images.yourstory.com/cs/2/e4fd1d90231a11efb1991bdbfe47f5e7/Imagehg99-1719910588068.jpg" data-alt="ReshaMandi-1" data-caption="
Women process cocoons harvested from farms connected to ReshaMandi’s network.
” align=”center”> Women process cocoons harvested from farms connected to ReshaMandi’s network.
For many former employees, months of unpaid salaries are just one of the problems ReshaMandi has left them with. They claim that administrative mismanagement and incorrectly handled processes are haunting future prospects, too.
They are struggling to find new jobs in an already tight job market with employers wary of hiring anyone who worked at the troubled startup.
Anil says he was turned down by a potential employer due to his experience working at ReshaMandi through a WhatsApp message. YourStory has seen the message which indicates that he was not being considered for the new role because of his past experience at the startup.
Other ex-employees YourStory has spoken to, including Deepti, say they are unable to access their provident fund (PF) accounts because of a botch-up related to their exit dates by the ReshaMandi HR team.
Deepti says that this has hindered her ability to apply for jobs after her employment at ReshaMandi.
When asked by YourStory how ReshaMandi is looking to navigate the cash crunch it has found itself in, the company says that it was talking to bankers for loans. “Temporary delays happen and the management is actively resolving them. The company is working towards resolving hurdles and looking forward to building the business.”
In a conversation on layoffs, Sarbojit Mallick, co-founder of AI-based hiring platform, Instahyre, advises that employees should make sure they’re well informed about a company going in. He suggests a candidate should go through employer rating websites like Glassdoor and read the reviews for any red flags.
”Right now the market is such that even funded companies are being shut down so you cannot vouch for its stability, but what you can do is you can find out from the Ministry of Corporate Affairs how the company’s balance sheet looks like and if they are profitable or not,” adds Mallick.
Anil and Deepti lack the funds to pursue legal action against ReshaMandi and Genzr themselves, but they hope their communication with the companies and media pressure will be the catalyst for their paychecks to finally be settled.
“The people who actually supported the company through those months that they could not pay our salaries, instead of paying us, they let us go, it is disappointing,” says Deepti.
“We worked very hard till our last day. It was not like we did not try our best. We tried our best.”
Edited by Jyoti Narayan
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