- Monday, April 07, 2025
By: Vibhuti Pathak
Billionaire tech entrepreneur and Rippling co-founder Prasanna Sankar has come under intense scrutiny following shocking allegations by his estranged wife, Dhivya Sashidhar, amid a bitter divorce and custody battle. Sashidhar accused Sankar of soliciting sex workers, pressuring her into accepting an open marriage, and manipulating their family’s global movements to evade taxes. The controversy follows Sankar’s earlier claims of being harassed and hunted by Chennai police due to an FIR filed by Sashidhar, who alleged he “kidnapped” their son.
Prasanna Sankar, who is reportedly worth $1.3 billion, took to X (formerly Twitter) to claim he was “on the run” from Indian authorities. He alleged that his communications and transactions were being monitored illegally, despite no official First Information Report (FIR) being filed against him. He also accused his wife of having an extramarital affair while he fought to gain custody of their young son.
My wife has given a press conf outside the police station as I was informed. Let’s address her allegations and see what actually happened.
— Prasanna S (@myprasanna) March 25, 2025
However, Dhivya Sashidhar’s counter-narrative, shared in an exclusive interview with The San Francisco Standard, paints a disturbing picture. She accused Sankar of forcing her into painful sexual encounters shortly after childbirth, insisting sex was a “primal need” for him.
“Prasanna would come and tell me, ‘Look, sex is a primal need for me. You have to do it. It doesn’t matter, like, you know, how much pain you’re in,'” she said. “He would literally, like, tell me that, you know, ‘If you don’t do it, then I want to go outside and get it.'”
The publication cited an email from December 2019 in which Sankar admitted to contacting escorts and later proposing an open marriage. “I’m super sorry for the stress this put on our marriage. I promise to never put our marriage in this position again,” he wrote.
Sankar acknowledged the marriage was “sexless” at the time and stated, “I once in a moment of anger discussed about opening up the marriage to other sexual partners. We agreed not to do it.”
— Prasanna S (@myprasanna) March 23, 2025
The couple met in 2007 and began dating in 2009. While Sankar was building a startup in Silicon Valley, Sashidhar pursued higher education at Cambridge and later worked at Shell in the Netherlands. In 2013, they reunited and married soon after. Sankar returned to San Francisco in 2015 and co-founded Rippling in 2017, which gained massive traction, eventually earning him billionaire status.
Despite his professional success, Sashidhar claimed he was emotionally and physically absent at home. “He would come back home, and he would sit with his laptop… When he comes, we had a restricted, small amount of time,” she testified in court. “Despite the limited time, Sankar always demanded sex.”
Sashidhar also claimed she gave up her career, including her role at Microsoft, as Sankar moved the family from California to Washington, and later to Singapore, in attempts to reduce tax liabilities. In court documents, she alleged that Sankar pressured her to take time off work for sex and manipulated her dependency status in Singapore to render her jobless.
Here’s evidence of voluntary hand-over. She’s somehow now claiming it was “forced”; pic.twitter.com/UEVgjSPSmw
— Prasanna S (@myprasanna) March 24, 2025
Further, she accused Sankar of engaging in “frivolous sexual behaviour with many partners/sex workers” and claimed he encouraged her to have sex with his friends. “That was where, like, you know, our marriage broke,” she said.
Sankar’s version tells a story of betrayal. He alleged that his wife had an affair and tried to abduct their child, leading him to file an international child abduction case. A U.S. court ruling resulted in a settlement: he would pay her Rs 9 crore as well as Rs 4.3 lakh monthly, while maintaining joint custody of their son.
However, disputes over custody continued. Sankar claimed Sashidhar violated their agreement by refusing to deposit the child’s passport in a shared locker. Legal tensions escalated further when Sashidhar allegedly skipped a court hearing and filed a police complaint. Fearing wrongful arrest, Sankar fled with his son.
He claimed to have informed police of his son’s safety but alleged that authorities still pursued him.
The public fallout between Prasanna Sankar and Dhivya Sashidhar has become one of the most high-profile tech scandals involving an Indian-American entrepreneur. As new details emerge, the legal and emotional battle continues to play out on a global stage.
