Manager threatens Techgoss
By Bala Shah

Techgoss, like every news site, publishes its share of news and views not liked by some powerful people in the Indian IT, BPO, KPO and Telecom sectors. Sometimes, Techgoss inadvertently make mistakes which are immediately corrected and an apology proffered. Sometimes, the IT/BPO Company moves to fix the infighting and corruption leaked to the media. 

Others grin and bear the news report.  Occasionally, we get a threatening legal letter.

As Techgoss readers are aware, we have published a number of articles detailing the inner working of BPO Sparsh. Last week, we received the following letter from a lawyer.

Techgoss has not published the name/contact details of the lawyer as we feel that he has just been hired to do a job.

“ 
We are concerned about our clients, Sparsh BPO Services Pvt. Ltd. (“Sparsh”), Lakme Building, B.S. Deoshi Marg, Mumbai - 400 088, India and about the unscrupulous and defamatory statements being made in the articles put on your website against our client by one – Mr. Pulkit Sharma on at least two occasions.

The said articles have been put up on your website by this Mr. Pulkit Sharma with obvious intention and purpose of maligning the reputation and goodwill of our client amongst business community across the world, and to defame it and the other group companies. We further presume that being the Editor of the website, all articles being put as articles on the website must have received your positive consent for all their intent and meaning, and therefore, we presume that you also have been an active participant to cause the said disrepute and defamation to our client at par with and in connivance with the said Mr. Pulkit Sharma.

It is obvious that such unwarranted and unscrupulous articles on your website are bound to cause loss in the reputation and goodwill of our client, apart from financial losses which can be assessed only after assessing the extent of harm and damage caused to our client.

Through this notice, we hereby call upon you to forthwith withdraw the articles put on your website by Mr. Pulkit Sharma and tender an unconditional apology to our client through your putting a clarificatory statement, failing which we have been advised by our client to initiate appropriate pecuniary and penal action against you and Mr. Pulkit Sharma for the offences committed as aforesaid.
“

What happens when Techgoss receives such legal letters?  We double checked the evidence in our possession and found that each story on Sparsh BPO was based on fact.  We then reached out to this lawyer asking him the name of the person in Sparsh who had hired him and if they would go on record saying that the Techgoss articles were wrong.

Techgoss has received no response so far from the lawyer who sent us this legal letter or from the BPO. Sparsh insiders tell us that most of their managers are quite comfortable dealing with all manner of media reports and never let news articles bog them down. In this case they feel that a Delhi based manager, without consulting his colleagues in Mumbai, may have decided to initiate this legal letter. The insiders feel that the Head Office may not even be aware of this legal letter to Techgoss.

The bottom line is that Techgoss has enough documentary evidence to back our articles.  But if push comes to shove, Techgoss looks forward to politely requesting the court to summon the relevant 3 senior BPO executives to testify what really happened.

(Techgoss had run the following story on Oct 12, 2009)

Sparsh BPO pays Rs. 120 Lakh to its client
By Bala Shah

Sparsh is the domestic subsidiary of Intelenet Global Services (P) Ltd.  In May, 2008 Techgoss had exclusively reported that one technology savvy rogue Agent at Sparsh BPO Goregaon, Maharashtra had frauded its client Barclays to the tune of millions of rupees. Now Sparsh has admitted publicly that it has paid huge compensation to its client.

Tucked away as an Annexure to Auditors Reports in Intelenet’s Sparsh Annual Report for 2008 – 2009 is this admission

“
We have been informed that one of the employee perpetrated a fraud on one of the clients of the Company by manipulating credit limits on customer card accounts. The said fraud was detected and reported during the year. The Company paid a total claim of Rs. 12,651,545 to the client and has recovered Rs. 8,700,000 from the related insurance policy. During the course of our examination of books of account, carried out in accordance with generally accepted auditing practices in India, and according to the information and explanations given to us, no other fraud on or by the Company has been noticed or reported during the year.

Signed by Price Waterhouse Chartered Accountants
“

(Techgoss had published the following article on May 13, 2008)

Credit Card Scam rocks BPO
By Suneetha.B

It was a splendid dream that turned awry, for Prakash Jadhav. This young man is in his mid twenties; educated, technically savvy and with credit card and banking experience. Jadhav was working for the Sparsh BPO in Goregaon, Maharashtra. He and six accomplices have now been arrested for a suspected credit card fraud that may be worth up to ten million rupees.

Jadhav is accused to have master minded a plot where he issued bogus credit cards to his friends, forging information of genuine customers and creating false identities including fabricated PAN cards (cards issued by the Income Tax Department of the Government of India for a tax payer). The young men used to splurge out using the cards and Jadhav got paid a neat commission for his efforts. At times, the young men are also believed to have cajoled shops to dole out amounts on the credit cards, signing bills while they actually bought nothing.

The nemesis came along when Jadhav fraudulently created a credit card in the name of a real customer and issued the card to a friend. The guy did not pay Jadhav his dues and Jadhav decided to teach him a lesson. He lowered the credit limit on this card. This was noticed by the BPO, Sparsh, which was dealing the credit card dealing processes of the Barclays cards. In normal circumstances, the credit card limits are always enhanced and rarely is it lowered. An enquiry ensued which unearthed the huge fraud.

Barclays bank, the investment bank with its presence in over 50 countries has been in India for the last three decades. It also has its Commercial Banking services now. But this is the first time it has been in the news in connection with a financial fraud. The bank is still not giving out any details, since the enquiry is on and a full picture of the volume of the hoax is not arrived at. The initial round has shown up a volume of about 9 million rupees swindled. The police suspect it to be much more. Several incriminatory documents have been recovered and Jadhav has confessed to the crime says the police.

According to a little bird in Barclays, the Sparsh BPO Barclays' process for credit cards is flawed. Secondly, the audit parameters were bypassed in this case, which means the entire reporting line of sups, team leads, AMs and above till Jeffrey D'souza, the AGM of Sparsh, did not have a clue of this practice going on. The rot (bypassing of controls for credit card applications and change of customer parameters on the CRM) is deep rooted. The source suggest that the actual damage or amount spent by the defrauders is in the region of 1 crore.
 
Vijay Venkatesh, VP South and West of Sparsh BPO, who is in charge of this process, will have the billing headache. Sparsh BPO bills approx 3 crores a month pan India (including staffing) to Barclays Bank India, and the 1 crore lost may come out of the billing as it was a goof up by the 3rd party contractor.

According to the same bird, the inside news is that every manager of Sparsh BPO was tutored on what to say to the media including customers, vendors and employees. It is known from sources that Sparsh positioned itself as having taken the initiative to inform the authorities of the misdemeanor by their employees.  The media spin for damage control has begun.  This may not be enough and Barclays may sever all ties with Sparsh.

Techgoss note: Sparsh is the domestic subsidiary of Intelenet Global Services (P) Ltd.  It offers state of the art solutions to Vertical Industries to meet their voice and BPO needs.  Sparsh currently has 5200 seats operating 24 by 7, and has the potential to scale up to 20,000 thousand seats by next year.