How a $250 million acquisition collapsed into allegations of fraud and forged signatures

The acquirer was Minute Media, an international sports publisher split between New York and Tel Aviv, with plans to scale VideoVerse’s clipping software beyond its Indian niche and into the lucrative world of international sports.

Less than a year after the announcement, the deal has unraveled. 

Investors are still waiting for their share of the $250 million windfall, and founder Vinayak Shrivastav is now at the center of multiple legal cases. Even the acquirer, Minute Media, seems to be backing away. In May, the company said it was terminating its contract with VideoVerse, underscoring that the two had continued operating as separate legal entities even after the acquisition closed. 

Reached by TechCrunch, a Minute Media representative said that “after, among other things, significant discrepancies were discovered in VideoVerse’s representations, Minute Media decided to terminate its engagement with the company.”

If the allegations are true, this was more than just a deal that fell through. Across multiple legal filings, creditors and investors paint a picture of a serially untruthful CEO, who used the guise of a successful business to accumulate cash-generating debts and side deals until the pretense became untenable. The result is an alarming reminder of the limits of due diligence and how much the business of startups still relies on trust.

The sheer volume of legal cases shows that trust is now in short supply. Bluestone Capital, which backed VideoVerse in its 2023 round, is now suing the company for fraud, alleging that the startup violated its investment terms and refused to pay out proceeds from the acquisition. In a separate suit, a creditor is seeking to recover $64 million from a loan that Shrivastav took out shortly after the acquisition closed. 

The same complaint alleges that Shrivastav committed fraud during the acquisition itself, claiming he “used fraudulent merger documents that did not reflect the business terms on which Mr. Shrivastav and Minute Media had agreed to induce Clippings’ shareholders to approve the merger.”

Even VideoVerse executives have begun lobbing accusations. The company’s COO alleges in a separate case that Shrivastav forged his signature on loan and share-repurchase agreements, extracting tens of millions of dollars from the company, in the wake of the Minute Media deal.

While not a household name, VideoVerse became a key player in the billion-dollar clipping industry, providing automated tools for editing long-form broadcasts into the shorter clips that travel well on social platforms. 

Its flagship product, Magnifi, is an AI-powered tool that can automatically identify key players and moments. Using the software, clients could easily generate packages of every three-point shot in a basketball game, for instance. Backed by an extensive human support team, the platform attracted high-profile clients like the Indian Premier League, FIFA+ and Nippon TV.

It is a lucrative niche, and one in which Minute Media had hoped to expand to the U.S. market before VideoVerse’s internal problems surfaced.

Even across the multiple cases against Shrivastav, there are conflicting claims and inconsistencies, as investors struggle to make sense of the current state of the company. What is clear is that tens of millions of dollars are missing, and there are already disputes about where the money went and how much is owed to whom.

In October, Shrivastav approached the investment firm Lingotto, arranging a $55 million structured loan — supposedly to satisfy an earlier creditor. With the Minute Media merger already public at more than four times that amount, it appeared to be a safe bet. The financing was even backed by statements from the creditor and Minute Media’s own CEO. According to a court filing from Lingotto, $53 million was transferred to an account controlled by Clippings on October 1, backed by a standard repayment schedule.

But Lingotto now says critical documents provided by Shrivastav were forged. Minute Media’s CEO never signed the documents, the lawsuit alleges, and screenshots purporting to show internal bank balances were also fabricated.

According to the terms of the loan, Lingotto was owed a $4 million payment on March 31, but it never arrived. When the investment firm called in the full amount of the loan with interest, it discovered a long list of people waiting to be paid by VideoVerse. A separate loan from Bluestone Capital had gone into settlement a few months prior, with similarly overdue payments. By the end of April, Shrivastav was out as CEO.

The following months have produced a web of overlapping court claims, as Minute Media, Lingotto, and Bluestone each seek restitution in Delaware Chancery Court. A separate claim from former COO Sabya Das alleges a more complex tangle of fraud involving secondary sales and a confidential high-interest loan.

Shrivastav did not respond to multiple attempts to contact him for this story. His most recent listed address, which appears in Das’s complaint, is on the Palm Jumeirah islands in Dubai.