India’s Enforcement Directorate has filed a supplementary prosecution complaint before the Special PMLA Court at Rouse Avenue, New Delhi, naming Sachin Dev Duggal — co-founder of collapsed UK tech unicorn Builder.ai — as an accused in the Videocon Industries money-laundering case. The agency alleges Duggal was “the key beneficiary” of a calculated scheme through which funds from the bankrupt electronics conglomerate were siphoned and laundered through a chain of overseas entities — a probe that now stretches from a Swiss holding company to a London startup that no longer exists.
The Videocon case is one of the largest money-laundering investigations in Indian corporate history. The conglomerate’s collapse in 2018 triggered PMLA proceedings that have since ensnared its promoter Venugopal Dhoot and, in a separate but related thread, former ICICI Bank CEO Chanda Kochhar over allegedly quid pro quo loans. Wednesday’s complaint against Duggal — filed as a continuation of the original chargesheet submitted against Dhoot and 12 others in December 2024 — extends that reckoning to a founder operating out of Britain, underscoring the ED’s increasing willingness to pursue cross-border PMLA cases irrespective of where the accused is based.
At the centre of the allegations is Duggal’s earlier cloud-computing venture, Nivio, and a Swiss holding company he chaired, nHoldings SA. The ED says Videocon began advancing interest-free loans to Nivio’s Indian entity as early as 2008, without a formal loan agreement. A loan agreement was then hurriedly signed in May 2011 — and the very next day, an overseas Videocon entity invested SFr 3.79 million into nHoldings SA at what the agency describes as a heavily inflated valuation, despite the company being loss-making. Between 2011 and 2014, a further $3.7 million was allegedly routed to nHoldings SA and directly to Duggal personally through a deliberate five-entity overseas chain.
“A loan agreement was hurriedly signed on 24 May 2011, and the very next day, an overseas Videocon entity invested in Duggal’s Swiss company at a heavily inflated valuation, despite the company being lossmaking.” — Enforcement Directorate, prosecution complaint (April 2026)
The agency also noted that in the financial year ending 2012, Nivio’s Indian arm received funds from nHoldings during “the exact same period when Videocon Group was transferring money into nHoldings” — a timing the ED says points to deliberate layering. Despite multiple PMLA summons issued since January 2022, Duggal is said to have failed to appear before investigators and provided only partial, evasive responses via email. In March 2024, the Financial Times first reported that his status had been upgraded from witness to suspect. A subsequent arrest warrant was cancelled by the Delhi High Court in December 2024 on jurisdictional grounds. In the US, the FBI had separately been examining circumstances around Builder.ai’s collapse, stopping at least one former senior employee at a US airport transit to appear before a grand jury; no charges have been reported from that investigation.
Builder.ai — which Duggal co-founded in London in 2016 and grew to a $1.5 billion valuation on the back of $445 million from Microsoft, the Qatar Investment Authority, and SoftBank — entered insolvency in May 2025 after creditors seized $50 million in borrowed funds. An internal investigation had found evidence of potentially bogus sales, and the company restated revenues to roughly a quarter of prior estimates. Duggal had stepped down as CEO in February 2025, retaining the title of “chief wizard.”
The ED’s complaint still requires the court to accept its merits before Duggal is formally accused. A representative for Duggal said they could not comment before the complaint was heard by a judge, but expressed confidence that “these baseless charges shall be dismissed.”
