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Gully Labs employee creates 100% discount codes, orders shoes worth ₹2 lakh, then quits

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.

Updated on: Feb 24, 2026, 10:52:12 IST
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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.

A founder reveals how his company was scammed by a new employee (Representational image). (Unsplash)
A founder reveals how his company was scammed by a new employee (Representational image). (Unsplash)

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.

(Also read: Startup founder shares how hiring a candidate with fake resume led to 2 lakh loss: 'We skipped one step')

“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!”

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.

  • Sanya Jain
    ABOUT THE AUTHOR
    Sanya Jain

    Sanya Jain is an Assistant Editor with Hindustan Times Digital. She has nearly a decade of experience in covering offbeat stories that speak to the everyday experience - from viral videos to human interest copies that spark conversation. Her interests stretch across business, pop culture, social media trends, entertainment and global affairs. Before joining Hindustan Times, Sanya spent two years with Moneycontrol and five years with NDTV. She holds an undergraduate degree in English literature from St Stephen’s College, Delhi, and a master’s in journalism from the Xavier Institute of Communications, Mumbai. Sanya has a sharp eye for spotting emerging trends and looking for newsworthy angles to elevate viral posts into meaningful narratives. She was the first one, for example, to cover Narayana Murthy’s remark on 70-hour work weeks that sparked a national conversation. She is equally at ease writing about business leaders as about the common man, about issues of national importance and memes that amuse social media. Sanya enjoys speaking with content creators, newsmakers and entrepreneurs to transform everyday moments into engaging, slice-of-life stories that resonate with readers. When she is not working, Sanya can be found curled up with a good book. Born and raised in Lucknow, she has spent the last several years in Delhi. She is deeply interested in animal welfare and now spends a lot of her time running after her destructive orange cat.Read More

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