Darmin Bachu explains the personal and professional context behind his reporting on governance failures at one of America’s most influential entrepreneurial nonprofits
By Darmin Bachu
As a community activist with decades of experience in corporate and nonprofit governance, I thought I had seen most of what internal organizational disputes can produce. I was wrong.
In 2025, I sought membership in The Indus Entrepreneurs New York (TiE NY), one of the most influential nonprofit networks for founders, investors, and mentors in the United States. My application was rejected due to a misdemeanor tax offense — something that posed no ongoing risk to the organization and had been fully addressed years earlier.
What made that rejection troubling, however, was the inconsistent application of character and reputational standards within TiE NY’s leadership ranks. Among those admitted to leadership roles has been Dharti B. Desai, a former TiE NY board member, despite his history as a principal of Mail Order Solutions India Pvt. Ltd. (MOSI), a business that was permanently enjoined by a U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of New York as part of a civil action targeting multi-million-dollar mail fraud schemes that preyed on elderly and vulnerable Americans.
In that action, Desai and MOSI were barred from participating in mail fraud-related activity under a permanent injunction entered by the court — an enforcement measure that reflects serious federal concerns about the defendants’ conduct in facilitating fraudulent solicitations that caused widespread financial harm. Department of Justice
That experience — being turned away over a minor tax matter while seeing individuals with federal civil actions in their backgrounds gain or retain leadership positions — laid bare serious questions about governance standards, vetting practices, and organizational consistency at TiE NY. It is precisely this perspective that drives my ongoing coverage of the unfolding governance crisis.
The complaint and governance allegations
On October 1, 2025, longtime TiE NY charter member Kesav Dama filed a detailed complaint alleging threats, conflicts of interest, and financial irregularities within the organization’s leadership, particularly implicating then-President Jignesh Patel. The complaint describes:
- Alleged threats to professional relationships made via text message by the chapter president.
- Questions about inconsistent application of membership and leadership standards — including how individuals with more serious federal enforcement histories have served in key roles while others have been disqualified for relatively minor issues.
- Concerns about financial transparency, including accounting for sponsorships and apparent significant losses at major fundraising events.
The complaint goes beyond a simple internal disagreement; it frames these issues as fundamentally undermining TiE NY’s mission of fostering ethical entrepreneurship and support structures within its community.
From internal complaint to lawsuit
What began as an internal governance dispute quickly escalated into formal legal action. In mid-November 2025, Dama filed a lawsuit in Queens County Supreme Court against TiE NY and several individual defendants, asserting causes of action under New York Not-for-Profit Corporation Law, including breach of fiduciary duty and tortious interference.
The lawsuit contends that:
- The board failed to act on repeated warnings and instead pursued procedural tactics that delayed proper investigation and resolution.
- Internal demands for documentation were improperly backdated and imposed unreasonable compliance deadlines, raising due-process questions in a nonprofit context.
- Communications disseminated internally — including unsolicited emails criticizing the complainant — may have improperly influenced board deliberations.
TiE NY’s response, filed in late December 2025, framed the dispute as a governance disagreement rather than systemic misconduct and successfully persuaded a judge to lift a temporary restraining order that had briefly restricted the organization’s governance actions.
That ruling does not resolve the merits of the underlying claims — it simply allows TiE NY to continue day-to-day operations while the litigation proceeds.
Governance standards and organizational integrity
As a governance professional, the core of this story isn’t merely the legal wrangling; it is the questions it raises about consistency, transparency, and accountability.
A nonprofit organization’s credibility depends on fair and uniform application of standards. When one applicant is rejected for a technical tax matter while others with federal civil enforcement histories are admitted or even elevated to leadership, it creates a perception — and potentially a reality — of unequal treatment that undermines trust in the organization’s mission and governance frameworks.
That contrast is not a peripheral detail — it goes to the heart of organizational integrity. Leadership must be perceived as principled and consistent in its decision-making, particularly for a body like TiE NY that influences entrepreneurs and investors at the highest levels.
What comes next
With the lawsuit now advancing beyond emergency relief, the coming months will likely involve motions to dismiss, discovery, and potentially deep judicial scrutiny of TiE NY’s governance practices. The broader entrepreneurial and nonprofit communities should watch these developments not just as an internal dispute, but as a test case in how volunteer networks must safeguard ethical standards to maintain legitimacy.
My interest in this story is personal, professional, and rooted in a commitment to principled governance — and the inconsistencies at the center of TiE NY’s current crisis deserve sustained and rigorous reporting.