Rahul Yadav might have had a tumultuous journey in India’s tech scene, but his wife now appears to be building some startups of her own.
Beauty-tech startup Kult has raised $20 million in its Series A round. The startup is founded by Karishma Khokhar, the wife of former Housing.com CEO Rahul Yadav. The Rs. 170 crore Series A round was led by Payal Kanodia and Aishwarya Bansal from the M3M Family Office, along with participation from Venture Catalysts.
Kult aims to make it easy to find the right beauty and skincare routines, and buy beauty products on its app. The startup was founded in 2019, and had announced a partnership with American cosmetics company Estee Lauder in 2023, which makes its products available on the app. “Kult App has consistently been the go-to platform for those looking for a premium and diverse range of products,” Kult CEO Karisma Khokhar had said after the partnership was announced.
Interestingly, Rahul Yadav and Karishma Khokhar were under investigation by the Economic Offences Wing of the Mumbai Police in 2023 for their role in an alleged Rs. 288 crore fraud at Rahul Yadav’s startup, 4B Networks. Info Edge, which was the biggest investor in 4B Networks, had alleged that the company4B Networks had first made “false and incorrect” representations to get Info Edge to invest Rs. 288 crore into the company, and then taking away the money through “illegal and circuitous transactions”.
In particular, Info Edge had said that an exorbitant security deposit paid for office space by 4B Networks was allegedly re-routed to another “family-owned startup” where Rahul Yadav’s wife Karishma Khokar was the CEO. OfficeChai could not confirm if Kult was indeed the startup where 4B’s funds were allegedly diverted. Info Edge had also alleged that the company had given out loans to ex-employees while the staff was not being paid salaries, and vendors had moved payments received from 4B to other firms of the family.
There had been several FIRs filed against Yadav over his role in 4B Networks. One had been filed by a vendor for being allegedly cheated of Rs. 10 crore by 4B Networks. Another was filed by Info Edge. After a lookout circular had been issued against Yadav, he had filed for anticipatory bail.
Rahul Yadav had founded Housing.com in 2012, and had regularly made the news for pubic spats with his investors, resignations which he later took back, and distributing his equity — which ended up being worthless — among his employees. Yadav was fired from Housing.com by the company’s board, and escorted off its premises by security. He’d then founded a startup named Intelligent Interfaces, which managed to land cricketer Yuvraj Singh as a backer. Intelligent Interfaces went nowhere, and Yadav then took up a job with a real estate firm in Mumbai. In 2020, he quietly founded 4B Networks. 4B Networks is accused of fraud for squandering away as much as Rs. 288 crore in a year, allegedly by siphoning off money among friends and family.
Yadav had announced his relationship with Karishma Khokhar in 2015. The duo had later married in Mumbai. Khokhar is an investment banker and a graduate of the Delhi College of Engineering, and now seems to on her way to build Kult after a $20 million fundraise from investors.