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A year ago when a young women entrepreneur Wamika Iyer, started with her journey of entrepreneurship while believing in her dreams of starting a venture which would benefit the common man using technology. FrshDay.in, a mobile technology which caters to daily needs of people by subscribing to all the breakfast needs. While working on the venture, she was looking for mentor-ship as she had nothing except passion in setting up the venture, inspite of her college/job etc which was for her living. She connected with Mahesh Murthy as he is a renowned VC who offers mentor-ship and funding to entrepreneurs. The previous post describes the chat conversation that he had, which did not only make her uncomfortable but also demotivated her from pursuing her dreams. When asked she said ” I always believed in FrshDay and I am passionate about it and would make my dreams come true someday”. But when this incident with VC Mahesh Murthy happened, she reached out to multiple media houses(especially RichestCorner) for support, with all the evidences. None was ready to accept the story and she felt demotivated and depressed about it. She decided to then stay calm about this matter and continued with her work, until she saw 2 more similar instances where Mahesh continued to misbehave with women.
She said ” Is this mentorship in Indian startup industry? We encourage more and more women to fulfill their passion but if there are roadblocks and perverts like him, then how would women pursue their dream?” If we do nothing about such cases and just stay calm thinking about the society, such people would continue to behave this way with everyone around. It is a shame to have such experienced professionals in the VC industry and it is our responsibility to stand up together and protest against such people and show them that Money cannot buy everything.
Post the news updated from Wamika, Mahesh Murthy Posted message in his defense which got trolled on facebook. Some responses are mentioned here
Anahita Thukral Your explanation reminded me of the time when “Grab them by the pussy” was dismissed as locker room talk. Kissing someone under a mistletoe without consent (especially someone you aren’t that intimate with) is NOT OK. Telling them you will do it as part as part of a ‘mass message’ is also NOT OK! I assume that message did not go out to the men on your contact list? That should have given you a hint that it’s probably not something everyone is going to be okay with. Maybe watch your words carefully next time. And to my fellow women talking about how women should ignore this kind of talk and ‘be tough’, let me remind you that we did not fight for our voices to be heard for this long just so we can put up with things that are clearly beyond the line of ‘professionalism’. Staying silent has almost never helped – maybe talking about this might actually help both sides see the other side’s point.
Sridevi Datta This is how sexual abuse begins. This is how women are shamed. I went over to the said “CEO” s TL and actually saw women actually chide this lady for being un-professional.And no this is not this “gentleman’s” first time. He played the same stunt with one of my friends. As for me, I never madke claims of behaving professionally. So I am going to go ahead and share this post.
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