Ex sales leader alleges bias complaints and bereavement leave led to her exit
A former Synopsys sales executive claims the company tolerated bias by senior managers and then fired her weeks after she took bereavement leave.
In a court filing dated December 15, 2025, Shruti Mangalmurti accuses Synopsys, Inc. of sex and race discrimination, harassment, hostile work environment and retaliation tied to both internal complaints and protected bereavement leave. The case was brought in the US District Court for the Northern District of California. It is at an early stage, and none of the allegations has been proven.
Mangalmurti, who resides in Texas and is described in the filing as a woman of Indian descent, says she joined Synopsys in 2021 as an Executive Account Manager handling multimillion‑dollar accounts with global semiconductor customers. She alleges that she exceeded her sales quotas in fiscal years 2022 and 2023, and by mid‑year fiscal 2024 had already achieved over one hundred percent of her quota and was on track to finish the year at over one hundred fifty percent of planned targets. The filing states that during her tenure she never received formal disciplinary write‑ups or negative performance reviews.
Despite this performance, she describes a work environment marked by escalating tension with Sales Director Sanjay Mehdiratta and her manager, Sonia Mukherjee. Early in her time at Synopsys, according to the filing, she learned of what she calls pervasive gender discrimination among male sales managers, including Mehdiratta, who allegedly showed harsh and condescending treatment toward female employees and “particularly” targeted women of Indian descent. The document says he appeared to hold the view that Indian women “constantly need to be told what to do and how to do it.”
The filing also recounts comments from male colleagues, including Applications Engineering Director Balaji Velikandanathan and Hardware Sales Manager Naveen Naidu, asking who took care of her children when she travelled for work and who made breakfast for her husband when she attended early morning meetings. The document says these comments reflected assumptions that, as a woman and mother, she should be primarily responsible for domestic duties and childcare.
On May 8, 2023, during a one‑on‑one meeting about access rates, Mehdiratta allegedly yelled at her to the point that she became fearful for her safety. She emailed Human Resources immediately afterward, describing his reaction as “scary.” According to the filing, his aggressive behaviour then became the “new normal,” and she and others observed that it was primarily directed at women employees.
On August 21, 2023, she raised a formal complaint with HR representative Elaine Yang, providing a detailed timeline of his conduct and stating that she feared retaliation, specifically the loss of accounts she “love” working with. Seeing no improvement, she contacted HR again on November 20, 2023, describing the working environment as causing her “significant stress, anxiety, and loss of sleep” and calling his management style “unhealthy for my work, my career, and my personal life.” She requested a move to a different reporting chain.
In December 2023, the filing says, her fears began to play out. Mehdiratta, with support from Mukherjee, attempted to remove both the TEL and Tesla accounts from her portfolio. The TEL account was removed from her plan over her objections, though she was still told to support it. The Tesla account remained only because Tesla Strategic Account Manager Andy Biddle “pushed back aggressively” against its removal, according to the document.
The complaint also highlights alleged discrimination in recognition and advancement. Of the three employees reporting to Mukherjee—Mangalmurti and two male colleagues—only the men were invited to a Diamond Club award trip in Hawaii, the filing says, even though she alleges she was a higher performer. Attendance at the event was based on quota achievement, and the filing claims that Mehdiratta “specifically manipulated the narrative” about Texas Instruments quota achievement for fiscal year 2023 so it would appear that she had not met the Diamond Club threshold.
The Texas Instruments account is presented as a key example of her performance. When she took it over in 2022, annual spend had declined from multi‑millions of dollars to “only two to three million dollars per year” under previous management, the filing states. She says she grew it to “over one hundred million dollars of spend” in 2023 by building credible relationships and improving communication.
In early April 2024, her mother’s health deteriorated, and she took leave from April 5 to April 27 to be in India. Shortly after she returned, her mother’s condition worsened further, and she took bereavement leave from May 1 through May 5, 2024, following her mother’s death. The filing states that this bereavement leave was protected under the California Family Rights Act. When she came back, she alleges that Mukherjee criticised her for not having their regular one‑on‑one meetings and for a lack of communication while she had been on protected leave.
While she was grieving and continuing to report concerns, the filing claims, Mehdiratta, Mukherjee and Mehdiratta’s manager, Phanesh Jannapareddi, worked “behind the scenes” to orchestrate her termination by presenting “a false narrative about Plaintiff’s behavior and performance” to Human Resources and building a case to have her fired. On June 18, 2024, approximately six weeks after she returned from bereavement leave, Synopsys terminated her employment. The company’s stated reason, according to the filing, was that she was allegedly a poor communicator. She alleges that this explanation is pretextual.
The lawsuit asserts multiple claims under federal and California law, including sex and race discrimination, sex and race harassment, retaliation, failure to prevent discrimination, harassment and retaliation, and retaliation in connection with her bereavement leave. Mangalmurti seeks compensatory damages for lost wages, benefits and future earnings, damages for emotional distress, front pay in lieu of reinstatement, punitive damages, interest and attorneys’ fees and costs.
For now, the case remains a one‑sided account at the pleading stage, with a court yet to weigh the evidence on either side.
