Shailesh Haribhakti: When A Potential Investor In Defamation Suit For Bose Becomes Mentor In Chief For Rattan!

The re-emergence of Ankiti Bose as a founding partner of Terra Invest has been presented in public materials as a clean transition from the collapse of Zilingo into a new phase of institutional capital deployment. The platform describes itself as an investment firm focused on artificial intelligence healthcare longevity financial services energy transition and related themes with a presence that spans London Dubai Abu Dhabi Miami and Singapore.

Alongside Bose the firm lists Krishan Rattan as a founding partner and Shailesh Haribhakti as Mentor in Chief. These three names do not appear together by accident. Historical anecdotes shows they form a documented institutional affiliation that invites closer examination precisely because each of them carries a prior record of regulatory litigation or offshore reporting that is a matter of public knowledge.

The strongest and most current link is the one published by Terra Invest itself. The firm’s website and related announcements identify Ankiti Bose and Krishan Rattan as founding partners and Shailesh Haribhakti as Mentor in Chief. Bose is described as a former McKinsey consultant and company builder. Rattan is presented as a banker and financial services entrepreneur who has overseen transactions of substantial scale. Shailesh Haribhakti is introduced as a five decade career chartered and cost accountant who sits on multiple boards and holds governance designations. The public presentation is polished. However, the underlying individual records are less so.

The connection between Ankiti Bose and Shailesh Haribhakti predates the formal launch materials of Terra Invest. In 2023 Bose filed defamation proceedings in the Bombay High Court. In an interim application lodged in those proceedings she named Shailesh Haribhakti and Anand Singh as Mumbai based potential investors and business associates who had accessed the allegedly defamatory article. The purpose of the pleading was to argue that part of the cause of action had arisen in Mumbai and that the Bombay High Court therefore possessed territorial jurisdiction.

The Court ultimately refused leave and returned the plaint noting inconsistency between the original plaint and the later application. The naming of Shailesh Haribhakti is therefore not a judicial finding that capital was invested or that a formal partnership existed. It is a statement made by Bose herself in a court document. It places Shailesh Haribhakti inside the documented orbit of Ankiti Bose’s legal and business affairs more than a year before the two names appeared together on the Terra Invest leadership page.

Shailesh Haribhakti doesn’t have a clean past either.

Shailesh Haribhakti’s own professional history contains two regulatory episodes that cannot be dismissed as routine. The firm historically associated with his name Haribhakti and Co LLP was debarred by the Reserve Bank of India on two separate occasions. In 2006 the central bank barred the firm for two years over a special audit of Bank of Punjab Limited that was characterised as sub standard. In October 2021 the RBI again debarred the firm for two years effective 1 April 2022 from undertaking any audit assignments in entities regulated by the central bank. The 2021 action was taken under Section 45MAA of the Reserve Bank of India Act and was the first debarment under that provision.

Contemporary reporting linked the action to the firm’s statutory audit of the Srei Group, which is a systemically important non banking financial company whose boards were superseded by the RBI amid governance concerns and payment defaults.

Shailesh Haribhakti has stated that he ceased to be a partner of the firm on 31 March 2018 and that he was not responsible for its subsequent activities. The RBI orders are directed at the firm rather than at him personally. That distinction is important and must be preserved. At the same time the repeated regulatory action against a firm that carried his name for decades is a material fact for any evaluation of the governance credentials he brings to a new investment platform.

In April 2022, Shailesh Haribhakti also resigned as chairperson and independent director of Future Lifestyle Fashions Limited. His resignation letter cited volatile complex and unpredictable legal and financial circumstances and stated that the board’s recommendations and efforts to find a solution had not received sufficient implementation impetus. The resignation occurred during the high profile and contested Future Group transaction process involving Reliance Retail. An independent chairman stepping away from a company under extraordinary stress is not in itself evidence of misconduct. It is however further context for assessing the judgment of a figure later presented as Mentor in Chief of a new capital platform.

Krishan Rattan’s record adds a second layer of prior controversy. Public material places Krishan Rattan in earlier professional proximity to Ajoy Veer Kapoor through the vehicle Augustya of which both have been described as founders or partners. Ajoy Veer Kapoor’s name has appeared in Panama Papers reporting. The Panama Papers disclosures concern the use of offshore structures and are not themselves findings of criminality. They do however constitute a public record of association with complex cross border arrangements that attract regulatory and media scrutiny.

Separately Krishan Rattan has been the subject of civil litigation in the Voltaire Capital matter. Claims against him in that litigation were later discontinued in 2026. Discontinuation is not the same as vindication after full trial but it is the procedural outcome that stands on the record. Rattan’s professional background includes senior roles at major investment banks and subsequent entrepreneurship in alternative capital. That background is substantial. The prior association with a Panama Papers named individual and the existence of earlier civil claims remain part of the public file that any serious due diligence process would examine.

The pattern that emerges is one of sequential professional proximity rather than proven common design. Bose after the collapse of Zilingo and the associated disputes re-emerges in an investment platform that includes Rattan a capital markets professional with his own prior litigation and association history and lists Haribhakti a governance figure whose former firm was twice debarred by the Reserve Bank of India. The 2023 court pleading shows that Bose was already prepared to invoke Haribhakti’s name in a legal context before the Terra Invest leadership structure was presented to the public. Rattan’s earlier link to Ajoy Veer Kapoor sits adjacent to this structure even if no direct operational connection to Terra Invest has been established.

What all these do establish is an accumulation of reputation risk. When a new investment platform presents itself as a vehicle for institutional capital and long term value creation the governance and due diligence standards it applies to its own leadership become relevant.

The decision to place a senior figure whose former firm faced two RBI debarments into a visible Mentor in Chief role is a choice. The decision to build the platform around a founding partner who carries prior civil litigation and an association with a Panama Papers named individual is a choice. The earlier willingness of Bose to describe Haribhakti as a potential investor in a court filing is part of the same continuum of professional association.

In professional networks that span India, Singapore, London and the Gulf sequential overlaps of this kind are not rare. Senior chartered accountants independent directors and former bankers frequently move across boards audit firms and investment platforms. The presence of prior regulatory action civil litigation and offshore structure reporting raises legitimate questions about the quality of reputation risk assessment inside any new platform that recruits those individuals into prominent roles. Those questions remain open. They become evidence of a compromised network only if further documents capital contribution records beneficial ownership filings board minutes or regulatory findings establish actual common control shared capital or joint decision making that has so far not been verified in the public record.

The public presentation of Terra Invest emphasises track record scale and thematic focus. The individual records of its founding partners and Mentor in Chief contain material that any sophisticated limited partner or co investor would be expected to examine. The RBI debarments of Haribhakti and Co., the 2023 court pleading that placed Haribhakti inside Bose’s legal strategy, the prior association of Rattan with a Panama Papers named individual and the existence of earlier civil claims against Rattan form a set of facts that sit alongside the polished leadership biographies.

This piece does not invent connections that are not there. However, it also does not omit connections that are documented. The connections exist. They are limited. They are sequential. They create an appearance of elevated reputation risk. Whether that appearance hardens into something more substantial depends on evidence that has not yet entered the public domain. Until such evidence appears the responsible description is the one the record currently supports a new investment platform whose visible leadership includes individuals who each carry prior regulatory litigation or offshore reporting history and who are linked to one another through both a current institutional affiliation and an earlier court filing.