Tiger Global-backed NoBroker, MyGate file FIRs against each other alleging data theft

MyGate said it had first sent a legal notice to NoBroker on June 12, asking it to “cease and desist” from unethical activities after it said an internal investigation showed that their “employees were being targetted for confidential information.”

“Some of their employees were posing as customers and calling our employees for sensitive information,” said Abhishek Kumar, co-founder and COO at MyGate. “In fact, some of our employees were also offered rewards if they shared such information. They have got access to our client database,” he added.

MyGate also accused NoBroker of trying to defame the company among its customers, and sought Rs 3 crore in damages.

“When we did not get a response from them on the legal notice, which we had also sent to their board members such as SAIF Partners, we decided to file a police complaint,” Kumar added.

MyGate filed its police complaint on June 19.

Saurabh Garg, chief business officer at NoBroker, said the company has not received any legal notice from MyGate.

NoBroker also responded with an FIR, which it filed at the Bellandur police station on June 28, making similar accusations of data theft against MyGate.

“MyGate has been planting their employees and agents in our offices. We have several cases where former MyGate employees joined our company in the sales roles but left after a few months to go back to them,” said Garg.

NoBroker has also accused MyGate of defamation among customers and of access to their customer database.

“One of our employees whose number has been registered on a ‘dummy society’ received a call from MyGate for selling their product,” Garg said.

MyGate was launched in 2016 and offers security and community management for gated premises. It currently serves 9,000 residential societies.

The company has picked up funding from Tiger Global, Tencent and Prime Venture Partners, among others.

NoBroker launched NoBrokerHOOD in 2018 as a smart visitor and residential community management system and says it has 4,000 housing societies already as customers.

“While the product has been active for two years, we made it world class in December of last year,” Garg said.

NoBrokerHOOD acquired Society Connect in February 2020 to boost its product.

Both NoBroker and MyGate have also given out harsh public statements against each other.

“MyGate resorted to these antics as NoBrokerHOOD has a much superior product offering and was rapidly gaining market share which seems to have rattled myGate,” NoBroker said in a statement.

“We were shocked by these incidents,” MyGate responded in a statement.

“After conducting an internal investigation, we issued a legal notice to NoBroker on 12 June. Surprisingly, NoBroker chose to remain silent and did not even bother to respond to our legal notice. We have now provided all the evidence to the Police authorities along with a Complaint, basis which an FIR was registered on 19th June 2020 by the Cyber Crime Police Station, C.I.D, Bengaluru,” the company added.