A $250M acquisition collapses into fraud and forgery claims

When Indian video-clipping startup VideoVerse announced its acquisition in September 2025, it felt like a milestone for the country’s startup scene — a $250 million exit for a company built on years of pitching and startup incubators. The acquirer was Minute Media, an international sports publisher split between New York and Tel Aviv, which planned to scale VideoVerse’s clipping software into the broader international sports market. Less than a year later, the deal has unraveled: investors are still waiting for their share of the windfall, and founder Vinayak Shrivastav is now at the center of multiple legal cases. Even Minute Media appears to be backing away — in May, the company said it was terminating its contract with VideoVerse, telling TechCrunch that “significant discrepancies were discovered in VideoVerse’s representations.”

Across multiple legal filings, creditors and investors allege a serially untruthful CEO who used the appearance of a successful business to accumulate cash-generating debts and side deals — allegations that, if true, amount to far more than a deal falling apart. Bluestone Capital, which backed VideoVerse in a 2023 round, is suing the company for fraud, alleging it violated investment terms and refused to pay out acquisition proceeds. In a separate suit, a creditor is seeking to recover $64 million from a loan Shrivastav took out shortly after the acquisition closed, alleging he used fraudulent merger documents to induce shareholders to approve the deal. VideoVerse’s own former COO alleges in another case that Shrivastav forged his signature on loan and share-repurchase agreements to extract tens of millions of dollars from the company.

VideoVerse built its business on Magnifi, an AI-powered tool that automatically identifies key players and moments in long-form broadcasts, for clients including the Indian Premier League and FIFA+. Even across the various cases against Shrivastav, the claims are inconsistent, but it’s clear tens of millions of dollars are missing. In October, Shrivastav arranged a $55 million structured loan from investment firm Lingotto, ostensibly to satisfy an earlier creditor; with the Minute Media merger already public at more than four times that amount, it looked like a safe bet, and $53 million was transferred to a VideoVerse-controlled account on October 1. Lingotto now alleges the documents backing the loan were forged, including statements it says Minute Media’s CEO never actually signed.

A $4 million payment owed to Lingotto on March 31 never arrived, and when the firm called in the loan, it found a long list of other creditors waiting to be paid — including Bluestone Capital, whose separate loan had already gone into settlement. Shrivastav was out as CEO by the end of April. Minute Media, Lingotto, and Bluestone are now each pursuing restitution in Delaware Chancery Court, alongside a separate complaint from former COO Sabya Das alleging a further tangle of fraud involving secondary sales and a confidential high-interest loan. Shrivastav did not respond to multiple attempts to reach him for this story.

Why it matters

The unraveling is a stark reminder that a splashy acquisition price doesn’t substitute for verified financials — and puts every party that took Shrivastav’s paperwork at face value, from investors to Minute Media itself, into the same courtroom.