Better.com’s chief executive is an erratic individual who fired over 900 people in a Zoom phone call three weeks prior to Christmas.
Vishal Garg and Sarita James (43), live together in Tribeca, Manhattan, with their three children. According to property records, they don’t seem to be owners of any real estate.
Garg stated in an online profile, that Garg and his family “continue to search for their perfect home”. They rented a $17,000 per month three-bedroom apartment with three bathrooms near 7 World Trade Center.
An online mortgage broker who had threatened to strangle a former business partner to death and burn him alive once, was forced to sack 9% last Wednesday. The company’s entire diversity, equity and integration team deals with workplace discrimination.
His employees were told by him that the market has changed. He made drastic reductions to his company’s workforce of 9,000 to prevent disaster. Softbank has backed the company, and it is currently expected that the company will have $1B on its balance sheets. The firm is scheduled to go public in a $7.7B valuation.
In August, Garg was under attack after Elana Kloller, one of his close executives, revealed the truth. He was granted stocks that could be worth many millions of dollars and $8,000 per months for two homes, as well as other perks. Knoller was placed on administrative leave due to bullying.
The CEO, whose salary and net worth are not known but likely to be very high due to the company’s value, accused his staff of being so lazy they essentially’stole from customers’ during his firing announcement.
Garg has been accused of using vulgar language and erratic behavior in the workplace. Garg has been also accused of manipulating financial records.
Better.com CEO Vishal Garg (pictured) appears to live a more than comfortable lifestyle with his wife, Sarita James, who recently got involved in the cryptocurrency game
Garg met his wife Sarita James (45) in New York City. They were married soon after MyRichUncle, a company that he co-founded with Raza Khan, a business school classmate, went bankrupt.
Garg claimed that his family resides in New York City’s wealthiest zip code. According to a 2019 Business Insider report, the average income of Tribeca residents is $879,000 and is home to many celebrities. It is also a very expensive area, with houses selling for $3.9million and renting properties at an average of $6,195 per year.
The couple’s current Tribeca address was not publicly available, however property records indicate that at one point Garg rented a 3 bedroom, 3 bath, 1,673 ft² unit on Chambers Street.
The unit that he lived is no longer available for rent. This suggests the Gargs could still be living there. StreetEasy lists a comparable unit for $17,000 per month.
Garg also lived in many New York City areas.
The unit he rented was previously at the luxury-complex Symphony House in Midtown Manhattan, just two blocks away from Central Park. Apartments.com reports that the current rental rates for the building range from $2,500 to $7.300 per month, depending upon the amenities and the units.
He also rented a 3 bedroom, 2 bath, 1,200 ft² unit in Chelsea. A similar unit in that same building is listed at $5,995 on StreetEasy.
Garg also has properties in Manhattan’s Nolita and NoHo Financial Districts, Midtown East, Seaport Communities, and the Forest Hills neighbourhood of Queens.
Garg claimed that his family resides in New York City’s wealthiest zip code. Garg was once renting a Chambers Street unit for $17,000 per month (pictured).
James, pictured here with MIT students, was appointed CEO of Embark on February 14, 2014. She has been in that position since then. Additionally, she became Independent Board Director for Marathon Digital Holdings in August 2021. Marathon Digital Holdings is an internationally-traded crypto mining firm.
In November 2019, James – whose LinkedIn profile lists her as an Independent Board Director at cryptocurrency mining firm Marathon Digital Holdings – told Forbes that she and Garg had taken steps to ‘simplify our logistics’ and improve work-life balance.
She explained to the outlet that she and her husband recently relocated their companies to different floors at 7 World Trade Center. This allows them to be able to walk downtown to work.
“Our children go to their neighborhood school because they can pick them up in the mornings. Our parents are both very supportive and we feel extremely lucky.
According to current property records, both entrepreneurs have still maintained offices within the World Trade Center.
James received her MBA from Oxford University. She was appointed as CEO at Embark in February 2014.
James began her career at Marathon before moving to Embark. held leadership roles at Microsoft Corporation, Citigroup and served as a consultant at McKinsey & Company. She was also an Obama Fellow and Acting Chief of the Small Business Administration’s Microloan programme.
During Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s second term, James managed the Strategy and Policy division of New York City Economic Development Corporation.
Property records indicate that Garg & James have rented Manhattan property independently but have not, Garg’s Better.com biography indicates, ‘dream homes’.
Garg was a mentor to her three-year old daughter.
He also rented a 3 bedroom, 2 bath, 1,200 ft² unit in Chelsea (pictured). A comparable unit located in the same building is available for rent at $5.995 per month
Garg previously rented a unit at luxury-complex Symphony House (pictured), located in Midtown Manhattan just two blocks from Central Park. The current rental rates are between $2,500 and $7,300 each month, depending on which unit is available.
Garg rented an apartment on Park Avenue, Midtown East (pictured).
Garg also has properties in Manhattan’s Nolita, NoHo, Financial District and Seaport communities as well as the Forest Hills neighborhood in Queens.
Garg was also embroiled in a fiery lawsuit, brought by his former business partner Raza Khan in 2013, who he threatened to ‘staple him against a f*****g wall and burn him alive’. Garg apologized later during the deposition that he let his ’emotions get out of control’.
Garg sued him in 2013, alleging their firm MyRichUncle had failed to file its taxes and Garg had transferred $3 million from his personal accounts. Since then, the pair has been in an extended legal dispute.
The pair met at New York University in the late 90s, founded online student loan provider MyRichUncle in 2000.
It began with a $30,000 initial investment. By 2007, the company was a publicly traded corporation that had handled over $300 million in loans. This made it the US’s largest private lender.
In 2007, the financial crisis led to the liquidation of the company. Khan and Garg were inspired by the collapse caused subprime loans to search for a new market.
Based on the algorithms they developed at MyRichUncle and their business partners, EIFC was created by them. It could detect toxic mortgages. The company’s purpose was to identify mortgages that had been improperly issued and help investors sue banks for selling them bad loans.
Khan said that although the initial signs looked promising, Forbes noticed some inconsistencies regarding the finances.
Forbes shared James’ November 2019 story with Garg (pictured), that they had made steps to simplify their logistics and increase work-life balance. To make it easier for employees to commute to work from their office, they moved the offices to World Trade Centers.
James is currently the CEO at Embark. This company was founded by Raza Khan, one Garg’s ex-business partners (pictured). Khan and Garg are currently in a legal dispute. According to court documents, during one hearing in December 2019, Garg turned to Khan and said that he was ‘going to staple him against a f***ing wall and burn him alive’
Meanwhile, James also serves as the CEO of Embark, a software company that helps universities and fellowship programs with admissions, which was originally one of Khan and Garg’s ventures.
The pair purchased Embark from the Princeton Review in 2007 under MRU Holdings – the parent company of MyRichUncle.
InsideHigherEd reported in June 2013 that Khan broke off all ties with Embark because the company was facing financial problems. He claimed the business owed $4.7 million to its clients and was improperly spending funds in order to deal with its ‘cash flow problems’.
Khan claimed that Embark employees deliberately delayed client repayments and ‘concocted fake stories’ to hide the delays. False financial statements were also circulated.
Garg also said that the two of them didn’t agree on philosophy, especially when it was about honesty.
Khan remembered Garg saying it in 2001: “People lie all of the time. We should do that more often.” I thought he was joking. He may have been kidding, but I believe part of him is right. In every joke, there might be some truth.
It’s not news you want to hear. “Your employment here has been terminated immediately.”
Garg fired 900 of his Better.com employees in a brutal Zoom call on Wednesday.
One angry worker filmed the call and shared it online, complete with a moment where they cursed at the CEO as he confirmed the mass ‘termination’ of employees from the Manhattan-headquartered mortgage provider.
The unidentified male worker could be heard to say ‘F**k you dude. Are you f**king kidding me?’
Garg was accused by his workers of being “erratic”, but he later doubled down in a blog post that saw him criticize his employees for their’stealing’ via laziness.
On professional network Blind, the father-of-3 wrote: “You know that at most 250 people were working an average time of 2 hours per day while clocking over 8 hours per day in the payroll systems?
“They stole from you, and they robbed from our customers who pay the bill that pays our bills,” he said. He advised that he should get educated.
Fortune interviewed Garg. He once threatened to strangle a former business partner to the wall and then burn him alive. According to court documents, Garg confirmed that he made these comments using the anonymous username “uneducated”, but refused to retract. He stated that he could have phrased them differently but the sentiment was still there.
He described earlier in his Zoom conversation how difficult it was to let go of staff members and how much he wished he wouldn’t cry like he did in the past.
“This is my second attempt at this in my professional career and it’s something I don’t want to stop doing. It was hard for me to do it the last time. I am stronger this time. We are laying off about 15% of the company for a number of reasons — the market, efficiency and performances and productivity,’ he told workers.
The boss was later incorrected by a company spokesperson who stated that only nine percent of those laid off were actually true.
Garg stoked the fire while accusing the market of fluctuations, despite the $750 million infusion that was received by the mortgage company last week.
In addition to saying that market efficiency and productivity are to blame, the boss added that it was essential for the company’s survival to “move in the right direction.”
Better.com’s controversial CEO Vishal Garg, 43, fired 900 employees over a Zoom call claiming market fluctuations performance, and productivity. Softbank backed the mortgage lender and it received $750 million in cash last week. This comes after it announced in May that it would be going public via a Special Purpose Acquisition Company.
Garg told Fortune that four weeks ago the firm started reviewing employee productivity data, including missed telephone call rates, number of inbound and outbound calls, employees showing up late to meetings with a customer, and other metrics.
He said, “As we began to slow down the pace of hiring we saw some alarming stats and a lot of our customers weren’t getting the service they deserved from each other’s teammates.”
Garg was further discredited by news reports that Garg had accused the CEO of stealing and being inefficient by accusing workers of working for two hours a day and clocking eight+.
The staff were shocked by Garg’s move. They also criticized Garg’s threatening call to companywide employees after the announcement of layoffs. Garg stated that his performance would be closely watched.
Fortune was told by one employee that Garg spoke in a harsh and intimidating tone. Garg also warned that next year would bring ‘bloodbath’, according to two other employees.
Source: “It seemed very bizarre.” “The comments were troubling.
Fortune reported that Garg did not threaten employees and there was no extra monitoring beyond what is required by regulators. But, Garg did acknowledge that his firm was looking into productivity data.
His ‘bloodbath” comment was taken out of context, and was in a wider reference to the mortgage industry.
Better, which offers pre-approval on a mortgage in minutes, saw its share price soar during the pandemic as the saturated home buying market, coupled with low interest rates, saw thousands of new customers looking for fast ways to get a loan.
The Information reports that the company has increased its workforce by 2,000 since Covid was founded and had a target of generating $800 millions in revenue for this year.
Better has still 9,000 employees in the US, India, and UK, despite the layoffs.
Fortune quoted Garg as saying that investors and members of the firm were supportive of job cuts. Garg refused to identify the board members and investors who offered support.
According to two former employees, and one ex-aide to the site, Garg is well-known for his erratic behavior in Better’s Slack messaging system as well as during company meetings.
He wrote that if you don’t want to work hard, then you need to look for another job.
According to some reports, the CEO demands high standards from his employees down to the most minute details.
The office managers were criticised for failing to fill the mini refrigerators with Perrier and Fijian water.
Garg also insisted on bottles of Gerolsteiner, his sparkling beverage of choice, according to Forbes.
“Why are we having biscotti like that?” Once he demanded office managers to stop making biscotti here like that.
Forbes received one email in which he wrote the following: “You’re TOO DAMN SLOW. You’re a group of DUMB DOLPHINS! STOP IT. STOP IT. Stop it NOW. YOU EMBARRASS ME.
Better’s headquarters is 44,000 square feet of office space on the 59th floor of 3 World Trade Center in Manhattan
The Daily Beast also reported that Garg told a former business partner that he was ‘going to staple him against a f**king wall and burn him alive.’
Better was featured in Forbes Fintech Top 50. It hopes to become public before the year ends.
This week, it received $1.5 million in convertible and debt notes ahead of its scheduled debut.
Softbank backed Better has received a $750m cash injection last week. This comes after it announced in May that it was going public with a Special Purpose Acquisition Company. Now, the company is valued at $7.7 million.
Garg, who was born in India, moved to Queens as a seven-year-old and attended Manhattan’s acclaimed Stuyvesant High School.
His early entrepreneurial mindset was evident when he bought CliffsNotes books and CliffsNotes, which he then sold to other students at a profit.
Garg stated that he thought his superpower was math. He also said that he could spot opportunities. This is what Garg shared in a podcast for 2019.
Teenagers also tried thrift shopping and later selling their clothes on eBay.
A Better spokesperson later said that this wasn’t true, as eBay was founded after Garg graduated from school.
The CEO claims he founded Better because he and James were still renting while she was pregnant with their second child.
“We lost the place we were trying to buy because of our lengthy and inefficient mortgage process,” he stated.
Garg started Better in 2014 to streamline the approval process. Better offers pre-approval for your phone within 3 minutes.
Additionally, it would not charge the borrower-paid fees making it less expensive for consumers.
Better will sell mortgages once they are issued to lenders such as Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Wells Fargo.
It has been a big hit.