How a $250 million acquisition collapsed into allegations of fraud and forged signatures

When VideoVerse announced its acquisition in September 2025, it felt like a victory for startups across India. VideoVerse was a simple clipping service, but after years of startup incubators and pitching clients, the company had pulled off a $250 million exit.

The acquirer was Minute Media, an international sports publisher split between New York and Tel Aviv, with plans to scale VideoVerse’s clipping software beyond its Indian niche and into the lucrative world of international sports.

Investors are still waiting for their share of the $250 million windfall, and founder Vinayak Shrivastav is now at the center of multiple legal cases. Even the acquirer, Minute Media, seems to be backing away. In May, the company said it was terminating its contract with VideoVerse, underscoring that the two had continued operating as separate legal entities even after the acquisition closed.

Reached by TechCrunch, a Minute Media representative said that “after, among other things, significant discrepancies were discovered in VideoVerse’s representations, Minute Media decided to terminate its engagement with the company.”

If the allegations are true, this was more than just a deal that fell through. Across multiple legal filings, creditors and investors paint a picture of a serially untruthful CEO, who used the guise of a successful business to accumulate cash-generating debts and side deals until the pretense became untenable. The result is an alarming reminder of the limits of due diligence and how much the business of startups still relies on trust.

The sheer volume of legal cases shows that trust is now in short supply. Bluestone Capital, which backed VideoVerse in its 2023 round, is now suing the company for fraud, alleging that the startup violated its investment terms and refused to pay out proceeds from the acquisition. In a separate suit, a creditor is seeking to recover $64 million from a loan that Shrivastav took out shortly after the acquisition closed.

The same complaint alleges that Shrivastav committed fraud during the acquisition itself, claiming he “used fraudulent merger documents that did not reflect the business terms on which Mr. Shrivastav and Minute Media had agreed to induce Clippings’ shareholders to approve the merger.”

Even VideoVerse executives have begun lobbing accusations. The company’s COO alleges in a separate case that Shrivastav forged his signature on loan and share-repurchase agreements, extracting tens of millions of dollars from the company, in the wake of the Minute Media deal.

While not a household name, VideoVerse became a key player in the billion-dollar clipping industry, providing automated tools for editing long-form broadcasts into the shorter clips that travel well on social platforms.

Its flagship product, Magnifi , is an AI-powered tool that can automatically identify key players and moments. Using the software, clients could easily generate packages of every three-point shot in a basketball game, for instance.