The Viral Fever Videos on Friday announced the appointment of Dhawal Gusain as the company’s new chief executive officer. Gusain will be taking over the position from Arunabh Kumar (pictured above), who has decided to step down as the CEO of TVF.
Kumar had been accused of harassment by multiple women and booked on charges of molestation in April. He posted an update on Twitter, continuing to deny the charges made against him, and said he has “confidence that the truth will prevail”.
Gusain has been with TVF since 2015 as the chief operating officer of the company. A B-Tech from IIT Kharagpur and an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business, Gusain has worked with a number of companies across various sectors and geographies at various locations in India and the United States.
In April, Arunabh Kumar was granted interim relief from arrest by the Dindoshi Sessions Court in Mumbai. A case had been lodged against him at a police station in Andheri East on March 29 after multiple women accused him of harassing them.
On March 12, in a blog post on Medium titled “The Indian Uber – That Is TVF”, a former employee of the entertainment company chronicled the months of harassment Kumar had allegedly subjected her to since 2014. She accused him of making lewd comments, molesting her and making countless passes at her both in office and during shoots and also “acting as a pimp”. The post was later taken down after Kumar lodged a complaint with the website.
The woman identified herself as “Indian Fowler” on Medium, after former Uber employee Susan Fowler, who had exposed cases of sexual harassment at her firm on social media last month. In her post, the only reference to the TVF complainant’s identity was that she came from Muzaffarpur. However, Kumar denied hiring any staff from the city in the past three years.
TVF, too, declared the claims “false, baseless and unverified”. “We take a lot of pride in our team and in making TVF a safe workplace that is equally comfortable for women and men. We will leave no stone unturned to find the author of the article and bring them to severe justice for making such false allegations.”
After the first post, three other women had taken to social media to accuse Kumar of harassment and molestation and another FIR had been registered against him in Versova Police Station.
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