KiranaPro CEO reveals sacked employee took revenge by deleting data of grocery delivery app

The KiranaPro crisis, which initially seemed to be a serious cyberattack issue, turns out to be an unusual case of internal sabotage. Investigations revealed a shocking fact of internal sabotage done by an ex-employee seeking revenge.

What actually happened?

The Bengaluru-based grocery startup’s CEO and founder, Deepak Ravindran, shared on social media to alert all the stakeholders and suggest damage control steps to bring the company’s service back online.

“After careful investigation, we conclude that this was not a hack. No external party penetrated our ordering or payment systems, exploited vulnerabilities, or bypassed security protocols. Our external security posture remains intact, and there is no evidence of any unauthorized access from outside the organization. All customer data stays intact,” assured the CEO about the safety of user data via a post made on X.

“Instead, this was an internal data breach. Specifically, it was the result of actions taken by a trusted internal employee who had legitimate access to our systems. This individual intentionally deleted critical server logs while they were being tested and/or edited, an action that goes directly against our policies, our principles, and the trust we place in our team,” he added.

In an interview with Hindustan Times, Deepak Ravindran identified the culprit as Lava Kumar, an ex-colleague who previously worked with him.

“Lava comes from a business background. He has worked with me in the past in Lookup. He wanted to work on product so I said okay. We did not have much by way of product, so I said ‘Fine, you can explore.’ But then my new CTO Sourav joined the company and he is creating a new team. So we are reshuffling the team,” explained Ravindran. The firing was not a firing, actually. It was just a removal. It wasn’t a firing,” Ravindran told HT.

“After the termination, we did have arguments of business, but we have settled it now. We are coming closer to the settlement. There is no hate among the employees now, it’s all peace,” he added.

Ravindran wrote on LinkedIn: “An attack of this kind is not an attack on outcomes, It is an attack on trust and the covenant we share with our employees, The next few months will see us come back, with learnings from this experience with stronger controls and systems in place.”

The grocery startup CEO even tagged the ex-employee, Lava Kumar, on LinkedIn, who was behind the crisis.

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