An explosive social media post by Indian-origin venture capitalist Ash Arora has sent ripples through Silicon Valley, alleging fraud by two Indian startup founders and igniting debate over ethnicity and self-critique in the tech community.
“Met two founders in SF this month, both turned out to be frauds,” wrote Arora, a partner at LocalGlobe and a Forbes 30 Under 30 (Europe – Finance) honoree, in a viral post on X.
Arora alleged that one founder was subletting a rented apartment and falsely projecting the rent income as startup revenue. The other, she claimed, touted Letters of Intent from Amazon and Google, though the tech giants reportedly had no knowledge of such deals.
“What’s common among them? Both desi men. Beware of these people,” she added. Arora further revealed that four venture capitalists reached out to her and correctly guessed the identities of the two founders without her naming them publicly.
The post sparked criticism from some quarters, accusing Arora of unfairly singling out her own community.
Responding to the backlash, she defended her mention of the founders’ ethnicity, writing: “Absolutely shocked to see egos being hurt here. The ONLY reason I mentioned them being desi was to ensure other people (and investors) are able to guess who these people are without actually naming and shaming them. The intention was to ensure people are staying away from these founders. That’s it.”
“As a desi myself, why in the world would I think lesser of my own community? It is dumb to think someone who is consistently proud of India, literally talks about successes every month and supports Indians in this world would ever want anything except progress for our ethnicity. Also, if we can’t self criticize, who will? How will we ever fix something if we are too proud to acknowledge it? If a non Indian pointed out this ‘jugaad’ culture that is already present everywhere in our country, they would 100% be called racist in this woke environment. Didn’t we cancel woke culture? Do better,” she added.
Who is Ash Arora?
Ash Arora is a partner at LocalGlobe, a European early-stage VC firm. She was named in Forbes’ 30 Under 30 (Europe) list for Finance and Venture Capital in 2024. Originally from Delhi, Arora studied Economics at Lady Shri Ram College for Women and worked at Citi before entering the blockchain space, eventually joining LocalGlobe in 2022 to focus on blockchain, AI, and frontier technologies.
