I started working for this startup selling SaaS based products last year in their sales department when the product was fairly new for the market with some great features. However, there was no market research done by the founders before launching the product and ultimately it started generating negative feedback from the market for not having features that the clients wanted and almost all the existing clients stopped using it within the initial 12 months of its launch. The main founder does not welcome feedback and also never admits the lack of market research before launching the product. His thinking is 'if someone doesn't see value in my product then they can F**k Off". He then reduced the salaries for the sales team without any written communication. Also leave balance is also made zero for the sales team which means salaries are further deducted for any leaves that the sales team takes. Instead of fixing the product and listening to the market, he is making life miserable for everyone working in my organization except a few lickers. He never puts anything on emails and does not even reply back to emails regarding such concerns. Also, the most important thing, this guy was made to resign from his position as CEO because of some issues with a female colleague and does not have any legal authority in the organization. However, he was asked to resign just to settle the issues with that female employee. There is an angle investor and an ex co-founder who are the directors on papers but they don't want to get involved in administrative issues.
NOW, on 31st of August, it was decided to shut down the company by the directors (investors) because of other wrong doings of the founder which includes: 1). Developing other/personal products using the inhouse tech team whereas all the inhouse tech work was outsourced at an exobidant price, 2). Not depositing TDS and PF for all the employees to respective departments and 3). Other administrative issues.
In his last email to all the employees of the organization it was mentioned that salary for the months of August will be paid along with an advance salary for the month of September in liu of notice/severance in the first week of September which has not been paid till date and he chose not to respond to emails and phone calls regarding these queries.
I have a total of 4,10,950 Rs. due on the organization which is still unpaid and there is no communication on this from his side.
Please suggest what and how can I take legal actions??
Thanks,
Ankur
