Help and advice needed
Dear Sir,
I am Mani and I am from Chennai. I was working in a startup Tevel cyber corps pvt ltd last year as their HR and training head. Joined the company with a lot of hope and passion to make a difference. The CEO and CTO is a young 35 yr old person, who has completed his Ph.D and the company is into cyber security. His name is Dr. Harish Ramani. The main business objective of the company was into training, consulting and cyber security services.
As in every startup, the company was hit by financial difficulty and we were trying hard to get in new business. The expenditures were high and income was low. Almost all the employees worked without salary, with a hope that one day the company will sail through. They were passionate and were delivering the results. But, after one point of time, people became restless and started to quit. The reasons were not only because of salary delay, but the way they were treated by the CEO. He was immature and arrogant and did not respect people's contribution and sentiments.
I was promised shares in the company and I joined the company without an offer letter. He was known through a very close family member and I also met the investor, who was an extremely professional person and hence i trusted them and joined. Every time I asked for the letter, he used to come up with excuses that the offer letter with the share option had been worked by the team and it would be discussed in the board meeting and would be issued soon. He used to say, we were like family and that he would take care.
I trusted them and was working. Of the 13 month i was with the company, he had paid me salary only for three months. The first month, I received the full salary and the remaining two months he had paid only partial salary (he had promised to pay a portion of my salary as reimbursements, amounting to close to 50k).
Over a period of time, the relationship started to sour and I lost trust in him. We found out that all the while, he had been lying and there was not transparency in the way he was operating the business and in spite of some revenues coming in, he said that he had been using all of them to repay the loans that he had taken for the company and very soon we should be getting a series A funding etc., all the employees including me trusted him and hoped for the best.
during one day, there was an argument and i decided to move out. I had asked him for the offer letter and he prepared one offer that we used to give employees and said that i would not be eligible for any shares. He also did not include my reimbursement component in my CTC and gave an offer letter with a different salary. He gave my Full and final settlement letter and included all the o/s payments due and said that he would pay me by aug'19. Till date he has not paid my dues. nor paid any employees their PF in the PF account. He also refused to sign my PF transfer request.
wanted legal advice and direction. Other employees (40+)also need help