pride, prejudice & other pretensions

8/8/2019 Pride, Prejudice & Other Pretensions

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.. Other PretensionsNEELKANTHDHIRWASRESTLESS.HEWASAMAZEDhowone phone callcouldcompletelyoverturn awhole-weeK:of success and happiness inio one ofhumming desperation. Digvijay Malik, head ofa successful foods business, had called him, hav-ing found his number on the website of Fun &Folio(F&F)India, whereDhir wasthe CEO. '"Pardon me fo'r calling without an appoint-ment Mr Dhir," Malik had said, "I am a little

perturbed. And I need your help to u!lderstandthe situation as it concerns your firm and myfunds. Last month, your portfolio funds man-ager Sushant Deo had asked me to sell 30 percent of my holdings in Belt-Lin India at Rs 73,insisting that he had market information aboutits plan to diversifYwhich did not have a Boardconsensus. I agreed as I trusted him, and to befair, he had taken some very wise decisions onmy holdings in Capollo and Wertier, whichsaved me from losses. But I recall being reluc-tant about Belt-Lin. The next dav the market-...closed at 78 and CNBC reported that the planshad been unanimously voted on, as expected."Tobe fair again, Deo met me and apologisedsincerely and even called Belt-Lin's CFO in mypresence for misleading us, etc."But, I don't know Me Dhir, how to say all thiswithout making it look ominous. A similar thinghappened yesterday with Kashi Vira, head ofMellon Media, the ad agency. He lost Rs 1.83lakh, and it turns out he had transacted throughDeo whom I had recommended to him a fewmonths ago. I am upset also because I had toldKashi about Deo and your firm after my timelyexit in Capollo. Last night, Kashi spoke to me;his nephew, who is an accountant, examined thedocumentation and feels the shares were in factnot sold on the day the order was placed. I don'tquite get the process, as I said I don't know howto say all this, but knowing Kashi's nephew is asenior manager at KPMG and clearly knowswhat he is saying, and after my own losses ofRs 3.5 lakh last month, I wanted to tell you thateither this is not above board or Deo is a bad egg."Then, I went back and cross-checked withanother broker - let me say I don't feel inspiredany more Mr Dhir. Please do not misunder-stand me, but I think you must get to the bot-tom of this. My lawyers may wish to confer "ithyou in due course, Mr Dhir."

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And ever since, Dhir had been restless. Deo ofall the people could not be the harbinger of badnews. The man was pure gold. He had beenshortlisted by the placement firm that F&F hadbeen using for the past two years. During the in-terview, Dhir was impressed by Deo's trackrecord - three years with Einstein &Bagel In-vestments, Washington, 14months atThadeVen-tura Bank, then one year as credit advisor '.vithGlobe Paper Bonds, Mumbai, when he met -,,'.ithan accident and was in traction for eight montjnThat was when he approached the p]Jj,ce;::,:',~tfirm and was willing to \':0;\' '':-:' ninch les:;,knO\\ing he had 'ns; .',','C':u"c;0. " 'n ,Dhir had Eked the vU1Jr:grn:n! \\'IH; :;,uh.

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c- . . : '. .Case.Study,conviction aPout wanting to develop~ newel that factored in emotiqnal bpyS a.n:dsellsthe. forecaSting techniques. pep ha!i anA degree from a reputed ,JJ-school.and Dhird the package and hired him. so, while Ma-d had abad experiel1ceran


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orprint it, so that you can reviewit at home.". Dhir agreed, "Hmm... bu~ then how wouldsecurity pick it up? Will your server pick upcopying of data onto pen drive?" K.Know ex-plained, "Wehave a system in which they canseewho has accessed what file.And there areany number ofspecialised software that moni-tor employe~}1sage.It's pretty easy these days;you need to only define yoUr parameters. Oncethe software starts running it tracks everything,every single key stroke, every site you visited,every document you opened and sent in emails-;-

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everything! "Dhir was sharp, he said, "KK, didn't you once

tell me that your organisation does not allow Iemailsat work? Ifthat isso,then howcomethe isame rulingdid not disallowpendrives?I mean Iit's like a movie tJ;ieatre not allowing you to !bring your own food in, but lets you cook food in :the theatre!" K.Ksaid, "The only thing we don'tdo is abody scan, Neel; somehow I was averse tosuch suspicion. It just did not seem right. Imean, at one level we say we are a fanlily, andthen we go about frisking them. So I did not getthat serious. And frankly, I have been casualabout all this, because I trusted the fellows!"So that is what happened, you see! I relaxed

the rules, didn't allow frisking, told them 'wetrust'; emails from non-corporate vehiclesstarted happening and I said, reh'lU!do, after allthese are young boys and girls and I did not liketreating them as suspects! When I relaxed, theygave up being alert and forgot thai there is still asilent software that is monitoring all actions!"Dhir was taking all this in as if in a trance.Then he said, "So now?"KK sigl1ed and for thefirst time his face lost its geniality. "I hired a cy-ber cop to examine the situation and he hired abackground checking agency to probe the an-tecedents ofDuleep and the rest you heard fromPrashant."Dhir gasped, "KK! These are young boys for

heavens' sake! Technology is like that. Think,there was a time when there was no technology,and these things happened even then... can'tyou deal with this without getting in the cops?""Neel, we are in an industry where the respectfor a system is what governs fair play,"said KK."It is an industry that works on trust, and we areconstantly dealing with creative sorts whoare very exacting in their demands, and we areforever willing to fulfil these... but, for a recipro-cation of trust. And when there is breach oftrust, then this one micro system will destroyevery other."Dhir was thoughtful. Stealing data and steal-ing 1twney... what a world we are in, where oneis as bad as the other! '~d I don't know about

yours, but in ours, some unusual behaviours are

"Wearealready facedwith a lot of'inisbehaviour' ;we havesitua- -tions where anemployeewould abscondfrom work,and joinanothercompany afterfaking thesignatures ofour HRhead!"

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cropping up, and if r.Jt stern.'1ledin the bud, allhelli-ill break loose," continued KK. '' 'Weare al-readyfaced with a lot of silent 'misbehaviour';we have situations where an employee wouldabscond from work, and go work in anothercompany after faking the signatures of our HRhead on a fake relieving letter! There was Arnavwho absconded, basically left us '.vithout serv-ing the notice period. We usually did not domuch to track down these employees as therewere too many of them leaving every month. Afew months later, I got a mail from a back-ground checking agency saying they were doinga BGC (background check) for ArDav,who hadalready joined Exetel. They also sent me hisscanned relieving letter, which to my astonish-ment and anger had MYsignature on it. It was afake, and a very poor attempt indeed!"Dhir was intrigued and disturbed too. He won-dered what these youngsters thought that madethem do t.~is.So he said, "Then you need to keepyour company letterheads in safekeeping?""Oh", said KK, "It is possible that they mayhave obtained them from a contact within the

company, or maybe someone was careless andleft them lying around; it is also possible to erasethe writing on a used letterhead and use it totype an experience certification letter on. End-less possibilities with today's technology likeAdobe Photoshop, MS Paint, Corel Draw... theseare techies, Neel, they can create something outof nothing! And in IT, the graphic artist worksvery closely with engineers so relationships arebound to exist. Sunit (a cousin) was teJling meabout a print shop he went to get his company


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HR ba~kground checktterhead~ printed, 3;11dhere he was shownpleSofletterheads Ofall tlie bigcompinies!~e ~u#lw.g~letterh~!" ,..D.h4'J,eJ1.~Jflj.~.wM..Wking,~p.()~~ a ctp.-E!lY4Uf~r~ntwod.d.pur b~I1giIldustry "~.~tn.~Ukea ~ge~s.arten in comp~son, KK,~en yes, our criJiIesare nottechnologyqyen; BtitteUme, wlJen your boys go ,abscond-g, do you filld oqt where ~ey go or what hap-ned_tothem? It should be easy to track theIDC__~_-'l{K said; "They probably just join another "Eoinpany that does not do aBGC, or they just venevershow theSafl;ire experience in their CV's. ' theyce they usuallyleave in less than sixmonthS, understandeywouldtryandexplainthat periodofinac- that the '

n~xtcompany:~ys~yingthat the: employee'serehos~lt1hsed~orasenous ~ment, ortha. career may getr.weremvolvedm a property dispute, orwere . 'c:Used ifokingaftertheirfamilybusiriess;andyoucan- )eOpar .aBGConthese,canyou?1meanifacan- they don t,darecame and toMyouhewashospitalisedaf- respond. I meanr an accident and, hence, could not work for the only reason-7mont.~, can you askhim for proof?" they stallDhir experienced a distinct discomfort. His is becauseind envisionedpage three ofa CVhe had read there is somelythis morning. The CVof Sushant Deo.An ha,nky-pankytduring u serviceweek'withthevi

pride, prejudice & other pretensions

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