The founder of a homegrown sneaker brand has revealed how an employee scammed them out of ₹2 lakh by creating 100% discount coupons for personal use. Arjun Singh, co-founder of the Delhi-based sneaker design house Gully Labs, opened up about the incident in a post shared on X.
Singh said that the employee joined their company and, within the first week, made several 100% discount coupons to order sneakers for his friends and family. He then quit.
Employee scams Delhi firm
“We hired a CS person a couple of months ago. Within the first week of joining he made INR 2L of 100% discount orders - sent to his friends and quit in a week,” Singh said in his post.
The employee, when caught, agreed to return the sneakers. However, the Gully Labs team only managed to recover half the stolen footwear before the unnamed ex-employee began to threaten them with legal notices, claiming harassment.
“When caught - initially he decided to cooperate and returned half the shoes but the other half were used etc,” Singh said. “Then he started sending legal notices that we were harassing him in response to our notice to return the products or reimburse us!”
{{/usCountry}}“When caught - initially he decided to cooperate and returned half the shoes but the other half were used etc,” Singh said. “Then he started sending legal notices that we were harassing him in response to our notice to return the products or reimburse us!”
{{/usCountry}}The incident prompted them to implement stronger safeguards, said the co-founder of Gully Labs.
Singh was responding to a post from a fellow entrepreneur named Akshay Jain, who said that brands have to face multiple challenges as they grow. Jain said that his own company had to guard customer and order details from employees.
“As brands grow, they have newer set of challenges. Never thought I have to guard customer details, order exports from people in the same organisation due to security concerns. Increases complexity, but no choice,” he wrote on X.
The posts have sparked a broader conversation about ethics and customer service.
“Problems of a low trust society,” wrote one X user.
“You won’t believe but that’s how Jabong got shutdown. They used to have flat 30% unlimited employees discount code and all their employees use to sell those discount codes to all family, friends, friends of friends and do unrecoverable damage to company,” another said.