Pune Based Startup Files Criminal Case Against IAN And Zippr

Shrikant Kunden, a Pune-based entrepreneur and founder-director of “Last Mile Digital Solutions Private Limited”,a startup, has filed a criminal complaint against Delhi-based “Indian Angel Network Services Pvt Ltd (IAN)”, Hyderabad-based “Zippr Private Limited”and Mr Gagan Aggarwal, Incubator Manager, IAN, with Pune Police, for allegedly misusing his confidential documents, valuable information, trade secrets and, criminal breach of trust. On the basis of the complaint, the Pune Police has registered the FIR u/s420, 406, 34 of the IPC.

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In last 6 years, Mr Kundenhas filed 4 patents in India. One of his patent-filed technologies named “Digital Location System (DLS)” that was filedwith the Patents Office in 2010, received 4^th Prize in a national-level competition organised by the Government of India and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in 2012, among 650 contestants. Shrikant Kunden

After being declared winner in this prestigious competition, asenior representative from the IAN, the largest angel funding company in India, met Mr Shrikant Kunden, and expressed interest in funding this winning project.

Later, this representative followed up by reminder mails and asked Mr Kunden to share techno-functional-commercial documents of the project to formalize and initiate the funding process. Trusting in IAN, since it was associated with the Government of India in the same program, Mr Kunden shared the documents with IAN in good faith.

After a few months, a new company was incorporated in Hyderabad, Zippr Private Limited, in which IAN invested INR 6 crore, which has allegedly developed the same solution and started commercialising its services, allegedly referring to the documents that are intellectual property of Mr Kunden.

Today, this company is offering its services to Domino’s India, Thyrocare India, Planet Express, commonfloor.com, Carzcare, Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation, Karnataka’s 108 emergency service and municipal corporations, allegedly using the same technology and trade secrets.

A few months back, there were reports that Amazon was in discussions with Zippr for investing $6mn in the company.

Subsequently, Mr Shrikant Kunden filed a criminal police complaint to caution the concerned companies, government entities and investors.

———— Response from Zippr and IAN —–

IAN and Zippr, absolutely refute these allegations which are factually incorrect and completely baseless. Zippr has built its proprietary location encoding technology independently to solve the core address infrastructure challenges of the country. Zippr has never spoken to the company in question or its representatives and nor was aware of their work until we received a clarification request from them in June 2015. The lawyer evaluated the case and found it factually incorrect.

IAN is India’s first and now the world’s largest Angel Investor Group which brings together successful entrepreneurs and CEOs who share a passion to enable more early stage businesses to create scale and value.

Aditya, Zippr says, “The allegations are completely baseless. Zippr has built its location encoding technology independently and has never spoken to the company representative nor was aware of his work until we received a clarification request from him in June 2015.

Subsequently, our legal team has reviewed the matter, evaluated the merit of this accusation and found it to be devoid of any substance. We have also filed a pre-grant opposition questioning company representative’s novelty and sent the required notice to him in Sep 2015 to which there was no response.

We intend to pursue the matter seriously and take necessary legal action.”

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