Ankit Maheshwari: Serial Founder At The Centre Of Alleged Fraud, Data Theft

The Delhi International Airport is said to have stood witness to the dramatic detention of a serial startup founder last week. According to multiple sources Inc42 spoke to, Ankit Maheshwari was picked up by police soon after he disembarked an international flight and flown to Kolkata, where he was arrested on charges of alleged fraud.

The Dataisgood founder was presented before the Calcutta High Court on September 26, the sources told Inc42, refusing to be quoted in a subjudice matter.

But, what played behind the unfolding of the arrest saga remains unclear. Inc42 has reviewed an FIR filed in May 2025 by Kantika Mukherjee, a resident of Kolkata, whose LinkedIn profile shows her as the deputy director of LawSikho, another brand run by Skill Arbitrage. Delhi NCR-based edtech platform Skill Arbitrage’s parent entity had acquired Dataisgood in 2023.

The FIR (reviewed by Inc42), lodged at Kolkata’s Kalighat Police Station, alleged that Maheshwari, cofounder Shishir Singh, and a few others were involved in cheating, criminal conspiracy, misuse of investment funds, and data theft.

Both Maheshwari and Singh had filed for anticipatory bail at the Calcutta High Court. However, on September 1, Justice Jay Sengupta rejected their bail pleas due to the seizure of incriminating evidence suggesting suspected malpractices.

The duo moved the Supreme Court on September 24, only to be turned down yet again. The apex court, however, granted the founders three weeks to surrender and apply for regular bail. The dramatic events at the Delhi airport indicated that Maheshwari had gone abroad in defiance of the court order. He is now in police custody in Kolkata, according to his family.

The family, however, denied all allegations. “The FIR is motivated, and the allegations are not correct. The matter is before the court. We have faith in the judicial process and cannot comment more at this juncture. We are hopeful that truth will prevail, and we will get justice,” Maheshwari’s father Anil Maheshwari told Inc42 in a written statement.

Now, the big question is what really went down at Dataisgood and why Skill Arbitrage went after the founders.

Reconstructing The Events

The story begins six years back, when Ankit Maheshwari and Shishir Singh rolled out Dataisgood as a platform to train aspirants in data science with a 100% placement guarantee.

By 2023, Addictive Learning Technologies, the parent entity of Skill Arbitrage and LawSikho, stepped into the ring, picking up 100% of Dataisgood in a $3 Mn part-cash, part-stock deal, according to sources.

Skill Arbitrage itself was on a growth path then, catering to mid-career professionals in India and other developing economies and helping them secure remote jobs, freelance gigs, and internships with startups and SMEs across advanced economies such as the US, UK, and Canada.

The acquisition of data science-focussed training startup Dataisgood seemed a logical expansion with apparent synergy. Under the terms of the agreement, Dataisgood continued to operate independently under its cofounders, although they didn’t hold any C-suite designations. Dataisgood saw its monthly recurring revenue surge from INR 70 Lakh to INR 1.3 Cr. It also doubled down on expansion, bolstering its international outreach strategy.

Some cracks that went unnoticed at the time of sealing the deal began surfacing by 2024, when SkillArbitrage received a complaint from the NSDC. “In April 2024, we received a complaint through the National Skill Development Corporation that an NRI had complained to the PMO, which they forwarded to us. When we investigated, we found several shocking irregularities at that instance,” Ramanuj Mukherjee, cofounder and CEO of SkillArbitrage, said in a written statement to Inc42.

That’s when Skill Arbitrage began digging deeper into Dataisgood’s operations. Questions sent to Shishir Singh remained unresponded till the time of publication of the story.

A Can of Worms

Inc42 has learnt that Dataisgood had disclosed only two legal disputes at the time of due diligence. “But, in reality, the startup was mired in several legal disputes with respect to refund claims and fake job promises. Worse, the startup continued to mis-sell courses, luring students with claims of guaranteed jobs at global MNCs and tech giants,” a company insider said, requesting anonymity since the matter is in court.

Skill Arbitrage spotted the first red flag when it saw Dataisgood claiming that it had partnerships with Microsoft and IBM. “When questioned, Maheshwari simply brushed off the concerns, pointing instead to Dataisgood’s growing numbers. ‘Let us run things our way’, he told Skill Arbitrage’s leadership,” recounted the source.

As the whiffs of malpractices became stronger, Skill Arbitrage sent an official for ground-zero reporting.

On visiting the Dataisgood office, the Skill Arbitrage executive found that employees were being presented as successful alumni working at top MNCs. These fake alumni, often falsifying accents, would be introduced to potential students on sales calls to build credibility and close deals. “The sales team would tell an applicant that an alumni, who is working at Microsoft, could mentor them. But, it turned out to be an in-house employee only pretending to be a Dataisgood graduate,” a second source told Inc42.

Some employees were also tasked with planting fabricated testimonials on platforms like Quora. These fake posts were meant to glorify how Dataisgood had helped them land dream jobs at marquee companies.

Skill Arbitrage immediately installed call recorders across the sales floor and began reaching out to applicants to verify the promises being made. Within weeks, complaints began pouring in. Some sales executives were fired on the spot.

“After this, we deployed top executives from Skill Arbitrage to manage the operations of Dataisgood. Over the next few months, it emerged that there had been many false testimonials planted by previous Dataisgood management, including friends, wife and relatives of Ankit Maheshwari and past employees before the acquisition, specifically on the Quora platform,” Mukherjee told Inc42.

When confronted, Maheshwari allegedly distanced himself, insisting that he wasn’t running the operations directly and blamed Skill Arbitrage for interfering and disrupting the business. Maheshwari stepped down around mid-2024, but the damage had been done.

Skill Arbitrage has so far processed a substantial amount in refunds to students allegedly conned by Dataisgood, according to company officials who requested anonymity. The brand Dataisgood was eventually discontinued.

Not All Beans Were Spilled Yet

Maheshwari’s exit from Dataisgood was not the end of it all. Within months, he quietly launched a new platform called 1to10X, once again offering data and AI-related courses with promises of lucrative jobs. In fact, he tags himself as a “3X Founder with 3X Exits” on his LinkedIn profile (more on that later).

Skill Arbitrage learned about this venture only after complaints from unfamiliar students started to surface. “We tried to trace these students in our system to understand their issues. That’s when we discovered Maheshwari had floated another company. His new website also listed our phone number as a contact,” a third source told Inc42.

Maheshwari had also put up a mail forwarder system on his Dataisgood email ID to his other mail ID, which gave him access to various critical information. This was also highlighted in the court hearing.

“It seemed to us that the perpetrators were selling courses abroad with false promises of jobs at META, Google, Microsoft, etc., pretending to be calling from London and California and trying to send them to us to harm our reputation,” Mukherjee said.

Not only had Maheshwari set up a competing business, but several Dataisgood employees were moonlighting for him while still being on Skill Arbitrage payrolls. Many of them eventually jumped ship to join his new venture.

Sources also alleged that AI-generated testimonials and photos were being used to create an image of success for the 1to10x, though Inc42 could not independently verify these claims.

The Calcutta High Court, in its September order rejecting Maheshwari’s anticipatory bail plea, specifically flagged his “second inning” of alleged unlawful practices. The court noted that he had launched another company, made “illegal gains with the same kind of promises” and even listed Skill Arbitrage’s contact number as his own. The court is likely to hear the matter in the next few weeks again.

Screenshot of 1to10x’s subdomain which continues to show Ankit Maheshwari as the CEO & founder

The present-day version of the 1to10x website, however, has scrubbed Maheshwari’s name from its leadership page. Instead, it now lists his brother Arjun Maheshwari and cofounder Shishir Singh as the people behind the company. Curiously, the LinkedIn profiles to their bios on the website lead to error pages.

Questions sent to Arjun Maheshwari didn’t elicit any response at the time of publishing this story.

A Past Mired In Controversy

Dataisgood and 1to10x do not make the first instances of Maheshwari’s murky dealings.

In his earlier venture Betaout, founded in 2014, along with his brother Arjun, wife Nandini Rathi, cofounder Mayank Dhingra, and Raghubir Tahkur, Maheshwari allegedly pulled a similar play.

Betaout, a marketing automation startup, quickly made a splash. Within two years, it raised nearly $3 Mn in funding, a sizeable feat some 12 years back, from marquee backers like Beenext, Hyderabad Angels, Mumbai Angels, LetsVenture, Vijay Shekhar Sharma (Paytm), Kunal Bahl (Titan Capital), Rohit Bansal (Titan Capital), Ashish Tulsian (Restroworks), and Anupam Mittal (People Group).

By 2018, however, Beatout was struggling to scale revenues and began scouting for a buyer after a potential acquisition deal by Paytm failed. Angel investors actively helped the team connect with potential acquirers in India. Yet, the founders allegedly went ahead with a deal with US-based BlueCore, without informing their early backers.

Inc42 further learnt that during the acquisition, Betaout’s cofounder, Mayank Dhingra, stepped down from his cofounder position.

“In hindsight, I realised these founders never disclosed where the money was being spent,” one angel investor recalled, choosing not to be identified because of the volatile situation. “We wanted what was best for the company. Instead, they bypassed us and struck a deal with Bluecore. Eventually, all early investors exited at more than a 90% haircut, while the cofounders walked away with a hefty payout.”

Maheshwari, in his LinkedIn profile, quoted Arthur C Clarke: “The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.” Assessing the limits of his plight, battling the charges of cheating and misappropriating funds, looks impossible now.

Edited By Kumar Chatterjee

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