Beauty and fashion product retailer Nykaa has sued its former chief business officer Gopal Asthana, who now heads Tata Digital’s fashion business Tata Cliq, accusing him of breaching confidentiality, misappropriation of proprietary data and seeking to harm its business. It alleged that Asthana approached several Nykaa staffers who reported to him previously to join Tata Cliq and that some of them have made the switch over the past year.
In its petition in the Bombay High Court, Nykaa said it had paid Asthana a substantial remuneration, including long-term incentives and in stock options. It sought a refund of around Rs 19 crore of employee stock option benefits availed of by him along with another Rs 5 crore citing loss of goodwill and other business metrics. The company also pleaded the court to restrain him from using any Nykaa business data for his work at Tata Cliq.
The high court passed an interim order on Wednesday, directing Asthana to not engage in hiring executives for Tata Cliq from Nykaa.
Falguni Nayar-led Nykaa has not made Tata Digital a party to the petition.
Asthana, a chief executive in Tata’s ecommerce venture, was the CBO at Nykaa for four years and was also on the company’s board. Nykaa said in its petition that such a high position in the company made him privy to confidential business data.
Nykaa said it granted Asthana an exception to join a direct rival despite having a non-compete agreement with him. Asthana joined Tata Cliq in June 2023 after three months of garden leave following his exit from Nykaa. Before Nykaa, he was at Shoppers Stop in various roles for more than 21 years.
Tata Digital and Nykaa did not comment on ET’s request for comment. Asthana said the allegations in his view are “incorrect and they will get established in the arbitration”.
“However, since the matter is sub-judice, I can’t comment on the same. The matter is between my former employer and me, and my current employer is not a party in the matter and therefore best left out in the discussion,” he told ET.
Nykaa and Tata Cliq are direct competitors across fashion, beauty and accessories businesses, where the other players include Reliance’s Ajio, Flipkart’s Myntra and Amazon Fashion. Tata Cliq is one of the key verticals of Tata Neu — the Tata Group superapp — as fashion is a high frequency category. Recently, Nykaa said it expects 20% on-year growth in revenue from the fashion vertical.
ET has been reporting about how Neu, under new CEO Naveen Tahilyani, has been trying to stabilise key group brands like Cliq, Croma and others on the platform.