Fall again, rise again: The turbulent life story of Sandeep Aggarwal

With a book on his tumultuous life out, Aggarwal has a candid conversation with Jyoti Mukul about losing the company he set up and facing an investigation in the US

Greenr Café at 32 Avenue, on National Highway 8 in Gurguram, is a vegan place. Though a vegetarian, I have never tried vegan food but am told Sandeep Aggarwal, Droom founder and ShopClues co-founder, is sticking to a vegetarian diet.

I choose a corner table on the first floor of the restaurant that has a raw feel to it with its décor of unpolished woodwork and broken flooring. Nearby is a basket of body soaps, face soaps and shampoo with zero animal content on sale.

Aggarwal is late and apologises for it. He tells me how he and his wife got infected with Covid-19 after a friend stayed with them for two days. “After he left, we get a call that my friend has tested positive. So we get ourselves tested, but it turns out negative. And then my wife develops symptoms, so I get tested again. Still negative. It is only after I start showing the symptoms, which initially I thought was psychological, that I get a third test done and am found positive.”

His story leaves me a little nervous and I take a big sip of my ginger ale, which I have already ordered while waiting for him. He orders a jasmine tea.

Covid-19, of course, is just one of the challenges the 47-year-old has faced. Aggarwal, who got married for the second time during the lockdown in July, recently came out with a book, Fall Again, Rise Again, on his tumultuous life experiences: The mortal fear of English as a student; an insider trading case in the United States; a bitter divorce; and business fights over the running of ShopClues.

His jasmine tea arrives with three tiny hour glasses: blue, white and pink timed one, three and five minutes for choosing the brewing duration. He asks me to try it, but I’ve already had three cups in the morning, so I pass.

He picks rosemary sweet potatoes for starters and Downtown Beirut salad as the main course. I decide to go with his choice but also order a Baja Black Bean bowl. “For the last two years, I have been phasing non-vegetarian food out of my diet,” he says.

So why did he feel that the e-commerce platform ShopClues, which he had co-founded with two others including his ex-wife, was not in the right form upon his return to India in 2013? At that time, he was being questioned by the US Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Bureau of Investigation for passing on a non-public information of a deal between Microsoft and Yahoo to Richard Lee, a portfolio manager at SAC Capital.  Agarwal was then working as a senior research internet analyst at Collins Stewart.

The investigations started four years after the incident. He had already moved to India and launched ShopClues in 2011, but was taken away by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in July 2013 when on a family holiday to the United States. The case went on for almost seven years, and earlier this year, the US Department of Justice dropped all charges against him.

Faced with travel restrictions, Aggarwal took permission to visit India for his parents’ 50th wedding anniversary in December 2013. At ShopClues things had changed. “I noticed the bell, which we used to ring every time we achieved a new milestone, was gone.” So were the posters that used to be there in every department to indicate their matrix — whether about sales or the number of samosas consumed that month. “They (posters) created both transparency and camaraderie but I guess the team was struggling with more dire things.”

Our Downtown Beirut is full of greens and has mesclun, parsley and mint leaves with bulgur wheat and sunflower seeds with lemon tahini dressing. Greenr places it in the “R”, or Almost Raw, category of food. There are six such categories, with Baja Black Bean bowl with charred avocado and layers of vegetable on a bed of rice being in the “H”, or chilli hot, category — though it’s hardly hot even for a European palate.

Aggarwal, who is wearing a grey printed shirt, looks tired, but is philosophical and candid. I ask him how he felt when things changed at ShopClues because of the case. “It was not easy because inside me there was turmoil, uncertainty and fear. Things for which I had worked very hard for 16-17 years either became collateral damage or were taken away from me.”

Aggarwal had run ShopClues for three-and-a-half years, but knew that the company did not want him till his name was cleared in the insider trading case. Large venture capitalists, who had invested in the company, were on the board. So, he started putting together Droom, an online marketplace to buy and sell used automobiles, around March 2014 and moved out of ShopClues in April 2015.

“It was unfortunately not a very cordial parting. I shared the best professional relationship with everyone at ShopClues before my case. But the board said the only reason they (ShopClues) had messed up was me.” For Aggarwal, three sets of crises came together.

After 17 years of marriage and two children, he and his wife Radhika, who was also part of ShopClues, parted ways. “It was painful and emotionally draining. We had mixed a lot of our personal and professional life together and sometimes it was hard to separate the two.” But after all the public misgivings, he says he is good friends with his ex-wife now.

So has his other venture, Droom, brought him hope? “If I did not have Droom, I would not have survived,” he says, getting emotional. “It became my solace, given that I had to give up on ShopClues, my family had split and I had a very high-profile case with the possibility of me going to prison.”

I ask him if after his experience, he thinks the stock market is a dirty game. Our conversation moves to Scam 1992, the web series on stockbroker Harshad Mehta. He’s yet to see it. Besides, his case was different from Mehta’s, he says: For one, he was only an analyst who did not make any money in the alleged deal. “I was completely exonerated. I had both remorse, for doing what was wrong according to the government, and  regret for having joined this industry.”

Nevertheless, he thinks the financial industry is one of the best in the world since it helps in wealth creation, funds industry and makes retail investors part of economic activity. Moreover, it democratises ownership. For instance, a person with even 10 shares of Infosys feels he is part of Infosys, he explains. “The US is the world’s most advanced, regulated and sophisticated market. If the same rules are applied, 80 per cent of corporates or bankers will be in some violation in India.” 

But then, every industry has regulations. Some people break those, some make a backdoor entry and some — accidentally — make mistakes, he says. The thing about regulations on insider trading is that they are very subjective, he adds. It is evident that he thinks he made a mistake that was accidental, and the view that was taken of it was subjective.

We decide to skip dessert and walk down to the sprawling parking area, pensively. For someone who set up two unicorns and also found himself on the wrong side of the law, Aggarwal comes across as neither arrogant of his achievements nor dismissive of his failings. Here’s a man who, in his own words, experienced ambiguity, uncertainty, chaos and confusion. 

In one life or many, I wonder.