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Jilingo co-founder Ankiti Bose has filed a $100 million defamation suit against investor Mahesh Murthy.
Jilingo CEO Ankiti Bose files $100 million defamation suit against Mahesh Murthy for 'defamatory' article
Ankiti Bose, co-founder of fashion tech firm Zilingo
Singapore-based fashion technology company Jilingo co-founder Ankiti Bose has filed a defamation suit against prominent angel investor and Seedfund co-founder Mahesh Murthy.
Sources with knowledge of the matter say Mr Murthy's article in the March 1 issue of Outlook Business magazine triggered the legal action.
In the article, Mr. Murthy accused Ms. Bose of illegally taking money from a startup.
According to Inc42, Ankiti Bose was suspended by Zilingo in April 2022 as a result of multiple claims of inappropriate behavior made by unnamed insiders at the organization.
According to HT Media, Mr Murthy did not name Ms Bose in the article but made various descriptive allusions. Referring to the founders taking money illegally from their startups, it mentioned "a woman" who "ran a popular fashion portal and took money from Sequoia".
Murthy alleged, "He asked his firm to pay Rs 70 crore as fees to his lawyer and it is rumored that a major part of that amount got directly back to himself in the form of deductions."
"The fact is, no evidence was presented to me; no reports were presented to me. There were a lot of media statements and a lot of anonymous sources saying things, but nobody (others) put anything directly on the record." Wasn't saying," she said.
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Ms Bose said the $100 million was calculated taking into account, among other things, the balance of her equity in Zilingo and the "damage that such statements could cause to future endeavours".