Investor-founder feud takes the wind out of TravelTriangle’s sails

TravelTriangle CEO Sankalp Agarwal has been fired twice and reinstated twice in the last six months as the company's investors try to force him out. Meanwhile, TravelTriangle has fired over 80% of its staff

Vandana, 18 Jun 2020

The investors weren’t happy with the founders’ fundraising and the company’s Rs 5 crore per month cash burn

The founders alleged that investors tried to secretly sell the company to MakeMyTrip

The pandemic brought everything to a head, forcing layoffs by the hundreds

Now, even as TravelTriangle tries to course-correct, the CEO and the investors are locked in a pitched battle

On 5 May 2020, employees of holiday marketplace TravelTriangle received a bolt from the blue. An email from chief operating officer (COO) Sanjeev Misra informed them that co-founder Sankalp Agarwal was no longer chief executive officer (CEO). Another co-founder—chief technology officer (CTO) Prabhat Gupta—was also relieved of his duties by the board of directors. Misra would take charge as interim CEO.

In a LinkedIn post nearly a month later, Gupta wrote wrote LinkedIn Prabhat Gupta on his departure from TravelTriangle Read more that things ended “on a bitter note”.

AUTHOR

Vandana

Vandana is based in Delhi. She covers vertically focussed startups in consumer internet space and also writes on travel tech and smartphones for The Ken. She has spent 13 years in journalism covering a wide range of subjects- equity markets, mutual funds to education and skilling, working at organisations such as Business Standard, CNBC TV18 and The Week in the past.

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