BharatPe co-founder Ashneer Grover has resigned as the Managing Director of the fintech startup, the Economic Times reported on Tuesday. This comes days after his wife Madhuri Jain Grover’s services as head of controls were terminated on allegations of financial irregularities and siphoning money. Grover will stay on as a major shareholder of the company.

In a scathing resignation letter, Grover said he was “being forced” to quit over “baseless and targeted attacks”.

“I write this with a heavy heart as today I am being forced to bid adieu to a company of which I am a founder. I say with my head held high that today this company stands as a leader in the fintech world. Since the beginning of 2022, unfortunately, I’ve been embroiled in baseless and targeted attacks on me and my family by a few individuals who are ready not only to harm me and my reputation but also harm the reputation of the company, which ostensibly they are trying to protect.”

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BharatPe was the latest entrant in the UPI arena, competing with goliaths like PayTM, PhonePe, and GooglePay and yet emerging as one of the industry’s leaders.

Grover went on to say in his resignation letter: “From being celebrated as the face of Indian entrepreneurship and an inspiration to the Indian youth to build their own businesses, I am now wasting myself fighting a long, lonely battle against my own investors and management. Unfortunately, in this battle, the management has lost of what is actually at stake — BharatPe.”

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Previously, Grover had lost an arbitration against the company’s probe of him, with an emergency arbitrator ruling that there was no basis to halt governance review at the fintech business.

Grover, who took a two-month leave of absence in January after being accused of using abusive language against Kotak Mahindra Bank employees and engaging in fraudulent practices, had filed an arbitration petition with the Singapore International Arbitration Centre (SIAC) claiming the company’s investigation against him was illegal.

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Grover’s resignation occurred in the wake of a leaked audiotape in which he is heard cursing and threatening a Kotak Group employee for losing out on share allotment during the IPO of FSN E-Commerce Ventures, which operates Nykaa.

Grover said the viral audio recording was a fake and extortion attempt. He eventually erased the message, though. He served Kotak with a legal notice for failing to provide funds for the Nykaa IPO. The notice was sent on October 30, 2021, but only became public when the audiotape was released.