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Sometime in the second quarter of 2022, Harshvardhan Lunia, the founder and then CEO of the fintech Lendingkart, boarded a flight from Ahmedabad to Mumbai. The agenda was simple: to acquire Upwards, a fellow lending company.
With over 110,000 active loan accounts and Rs 6,000 crore in assets under management (AUM) in September 2023, Lendingkart was then
In fact, the idea came from Lendingkart’s lead investor, Fullerton Financial Holdings (FFH), a wholly-owned subsidiary of global investment firm Temasek. At the time, Upwards was a small fintech with around Rs 15 crore in revenue, backed by common investors Indiaquotient and Mayfield.
But soon, things went south. Lunia appeared less involved in decision-making even as Fullerton CEO Yeo Hong Ping and COO Anindo Mukherjee stepped up their presence. And then the company’s valuation took a nosedive—from $700 million in May 2024 to less than $100 million in October. Lendingkart also ran out of cash.
Fullerton panicked. Lunia was ousted from the company’s management and board of directors, and Fullerton took over. It raised its stake in Lendingkart from 38% to 77%, seized control of the board and the business, and bailed out Lendingkart.
In response, Lunia, alongside his father, Raichand, and elder brother, Anand, filed a petition with the NCLT in November 2025, accusing Fullerton of being “oppressiveâ€, “mala fideâ€, and “in violation of a shareholders’ agreementâ€. They want the current management toppled and an independent investigation into how the company was devalued by more than 90% in just a few quarters, according to the petition.
The NCLT is set to hear the case on 18 June.
The earlier valuation followed the net-asset-value-and-excess-return
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Lendingkart’s last stand: a founder, a Temasek unit, an outdated deal, and a $600M wipeout
Suprita Anupam
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