Exclusive: Yepme co-founder joins employment background verifier AuthBridge

Sandeep Sharma, who co-founded fashion e-commerce firm Yepme, has joined employment background verification company AuthBridge Research Services Pvt. Ltd as its operations and technology chief, two people in the know told TechCircle. 

His departure comes amid indications that Yepme has significantly scaled down operations. While the company’s website is still live, it does not display any products for sale. The e-tailer’s Android and iOS apps are no longer available.

Queries to Yepme co-founder and chief executive Vivek Gaur on Sharma's exit and Yepme's current status of operations did not yield a response till the time of publishing this report. Sharma was not immediately reachable for comment.

Sharma had co-founded Yepme in 2010, along with Vivek Gaur and Anand Jadhav. A graduate of IIM-Bengaluru and IIT-Delhi, Sharma had previously worked at Accenture, Sapient, and HCL.

Owned and operated by VAS Data Services Pvt. Ltd, Yepme gradually evolved from e-commerce to an omnichannel business and expanded to many cities via a franchise model. In early-2017, TechCircle reported that Yepme was looking to reduce its headcount by 80-90% on account of a severe fund crunch. The firm had close to 170 employees then.

Later that year, the company shuttered two offline stores each in Gurugram and Noida, and moved to a smaller warehouse.

Several of its employees had approached the assistant labour commissioner on two occasions, complaining of salary delays and “mental pressure”.

In its latest fundraising round in May 2017, Yepme had raised Rs 6.26 crore from listed garment exporter Gokaldas Exports Ltd. Yepme had said the funds would be used for the operations of its British entity, Yepme UK Plc., which dealt in fashion products exclusively for international markets, mainly the US (United States), Europe and West Asia. 

Earlier in the same month, Yepme had raised Rs 4.5 crore in bridge funding by issuing optionally convertible debentures to Kolkata-based Rainbow Digital Services Pvt. Ltd and Noida-headquartered ILearnFinance Academy Pvt. Ltd.

Previously, in September 2015, Yepme raised $28.6 million from Malaysia’s Khazanah Nasional Berhad. In September 2014, Yepme raised $32.5 million from Helion Venture Partners II LLC, Capricorn Capital Partners and Morpheus Media Fund.

Authbridge
Founded by Ajay Trehan in 2005, AuthBridge offers instant identity verification, employment background screening, customer screening and partner due diligence.

AuthBridge claims to have delivery capabilities in more than 140 countries and a client base across businesses. It screens about 10,000 individuals per day.

In October last year, the company had acquired Bengaluru-based Footprints Collateral Services Pvt. Ltd operating in the same segment.

Trehan did not respond to a query about Sharma’s appointment.