Indian American Venture Capitalist Nisha Desai Sues PayPal for Alleged Racial Discrimination
- She said the company refused to fund her firm through its $535 million investment program to black and Hispanic applicants, because of her Asian ethnicity.
An Indian American woman has sued PayPal for restricting part of a $535 million investment program to black and Hispanic applicants, costing her millions of dollars. In a lawsuit filed last week, Nisha Desai, CEO and managing general partner at venture capitalist firm Andav Capital, has accused the company of excluding her from its diversity and equity program because she is Asian.
As someone born and raised in “the deep south,” Desai said in the Jan. 2 lawsuit that she thought she was “a good fit for PayPal’s investment program. The program, announced in June 2020 by the San Jose, California-based company “to support Black and minority-owned businesses and help address economic inequality.”
She “spent 1.5 months seeking funding before PayPal stopped communicating, even as the company invested $100m in 19 venture capital firms led by Black and Hispanic people,”the lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court added. According to her, PayPal has told multiple other businesswomen they were ineligible for funding because of their Asian descent. “To PayPal and its executives, Asian Americans might be minorities, but they’re the wrong kind of minority,” read the complaint.
Desai has accused PayPal of violating section 1981 of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which bars racial bias in contracting; Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars recipients of federal funds from allowing racial discrimination; and New York state and city human rights laws, according to the lawsuit. She is seeking unspecified damages and to ban PayPal from considering race and ethnicity in its investment program.
Reuters noted that Desai’s complaint is “part of a growing push among some conservatives to curtail DEI — diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in corporate America.” DEI is described as “a philosophy and set of practices that aim to create a more welcoming and inclusive environment for people from different backgrounds and experience.”
According to Reuters, Desai sued “after the federal appeals court in Manhattan said last March that the advocacy group Do No Harm lacked standing to pursue a similar case against drugmaker Pfizer over a fellowship program for Black, Hispanic and Native American people, because it did not identify a member who had been harmed.” She is represented by Consovoy McCarthy, which represented Do No Harm and “often advocates for conservative causes,” the news agency added.
Desai profile on the Atlantic Council website describes Andav Capita as “a top-quartile venture capital firm for early-stage tech-enabled companies with underdog founders..” Under her leadership, the firm has “invested primarily in frictionless commerce, marketplaces, risk management, and enterprise software,” the profile said. She is also investor-in-residence and an advisor to the Good Machine Studio, a deep tech venture capital studio backed by Schmidt Futures.
Prior to her role leading Andav Capital, Desai was a director at Deutsche Bank, where she “managed a firm-wide restructuring program, advised senior management and board members, and represented the firm in industry and regulatory discussions,” the according to the profile. Earlier in her career, she worked on financial litigation and white-collar criminal actions at the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. She also worked in consultative sales and business development at Google Inc.; and as a pre-revenue founding team member at Sweetgreen. She also served as U.S. congressional staff for Congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis and as judicial staff for a public defender’s office and the Superior Court in Georgia.
Desai holds an MBA with distinction in finance, operations, and entrepreneurship from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and a BS with honors in international politics from Georgetown University. She is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Charterholder and was named one of eight “2021 FinTech Women Money Movers.” She has served on the boards of various companies and nonprofits and as an advisor, judge, and mentor.