Fraud path of Paytm

VIJAY Shekhar Sharma calls himself a capitalist, hippy and founder. In five years' time he now boasts of a billion dollar company in Paytm. He did not lay any brick or mortar in his climb up the ladder. He sold one website to launch another, and there he's now dipping his hands into the pockets of Jack Ma of Alibaba to become more fatter. 

Sharma comes from the city of dust and oriental learning for minority community. But Aligarh never made names internationally for either its insatiable hunger for dust or for the Muslim University, which came up with liberal British support, who in return for the favour insured "The Raj" with divide and rule policy. Aligarh made names nationally and internationally for its copyright on "Jugaad" technology.

That Jugaad is now internationally accepted as a word to describe the habit of finding a solution through whatever means speaks volume for the achievement of Aligarh. Thus, the city not only bathes each moment in swirling dust, but also sprays herself with smoke emitted by generator sets mounted on wooden carts, which outnumber the manufactured four-wheelers there.

SHARMA did not bring any innovation in his path which led him to the billionaire club. He aped what the Americans did decades back. True to all capitalist economy and consumerist society, greed comes out as surest source of success of any business. Aligarh knows the value of greed better than any other city, and so it throws all norms to the winds to get to the ends. Sharma truly belongs to Aligarh. And, thus, he made greed of the people his business model. 

Business grew and data expanded. Customers flocked for cash back offers. No technological innovation was required to become big, as telling it aloud that the App or Paytm website pays back was enough to broaden the customer base. The likes of Ratan Tata and Jack Ma of Alibaba too poured their monies to make more money by tapping the business of greed.       

The Paytm is essentially a wallet. But the greed of Sharma to become a big player took him to the path of cheating the customers. Sounds wired that a new age entrepreneur with funding by venture capitalists like Ratan Tata and Jack Ma could be essentially a crooked fellow who is out there to make quick bucks at the expanse of customers! It would not sound so, with an illustration.

YOU visit Paytm and opts for a recharge of pre-paid mobile. You pay Rs 515, the Paytm says there will be full talk-time along with extra time. But your mobile phone is actually given a talk time of Rs 1. What happened to Rs 514?

The search for this answer is through a 48-hour long ordeal. The Paytm would say, deal with the

Airtel. "We are only a payment gateway," says Rishi of the Paytm.

He's technically right, that Paytm has an RBI license as a wallet in the form of a payment gateway. But take a look at the Paytm portal. It operates and functions as an e-commerce marketplace and has an ecosystem on the lines of Flipkart and Amazaon where it allows sellers to sell their products. And, thus, it's not just a payment gateway. So, Rishi lied actually, but he's doing a job in a firm where lying appears to be a culture.

Rishi and all his associates at Paytm would so say, "go and settle it with Airtel". So, Paytm essentially is an e-commerce marketplace where it takes no accountability for false promises and failure to deliver the promised services. Thus, deception looks well-knit and camouflaged.

But, yes, what happened to Rs 514?

The answer is not yet forthcoming, and now the time has come to drag Sharma. "I really feel terrible the way one of our team member (s) took judgment on the issue," said Sharma when he was confronted. 

Then he informs that the Rs 515 paid to Paytm gave an international roaming facility to a mobile

phone which is being used in Godda and Jharkhand. The user has no plan to go abroad, and the recharge was not done for such a purpose. So, the Paytm has an extraordinary ability to give an international roaming facility when talk-time recharge is sought. He also asks the customer to talk to the cellular operator.

Thus, Sharma, who is chief executive officer (CEO) of the Paytm, is in a business where he is not accountable for false promises, cheating, deception, and fraud, but would pass on the onus to an organization whose doors the customers never knocked. Is there any better business in the world than this?

Yet, when confronted, Sharma asks for solution from the aggrieved customer asking how should the process be developed that the customers are not cheated. Thus, he admitted that the Paytm process is flawed. And, yet, the likes of Ratan Tata and Jack Ma are investing in a flawed firm.

Frogs sometimes jump off well, and think that they can own the ocean too. The internet entrepreneurs are such frogs who're taking too many customers for a ride with impunity.

A thug state

"I find the prohibitionist a negative person. To ban drinking has as much chance of success as an attempt to ban sex. One unfortunate outcome of prohibitionism anywhere in the world is that it promotes hypocrisy as well as disrespect for the law," wrote Cedric Day, a British bureaucrat, who worked in India in 1960s.

In Cedric Day's descriptions, Nitish Kumar and Arvind Kejriwal should be outright negative persons. But, yet, Kumar can well take refuge in the fact that a large number of women for years had been pleading him for curbs on drunken ruffians in the state. 

No such alibi exists for Kejriwal. That a few elites began loud-talks of toxic Delhi air was reason enough for him to latch on an opportunity to host another event, and engage people on a large scale in a mass hysteria. The darling of television sensed that an event affecting most of the people in Delhi would draw curtain on his fulsome failure on all the grand promises he made to grab power. And, thus, Delhi is hosting the spectacle of the second phase of "Odd and Even scheme" for four-wheeled vehicles.

MITHILESH Kumar (name changed), who stays in Vasundhara area of Ghaziabad,

works in Delhi, and has no option but to commute in his car. The nearest Metro from his home is about seven km away, and no convenient mode to complete this last mile connectivity is there, which explains his bond with the car. 

But the first day of the second phase of "Odd and Even" scheme made his "even" car ineligible to hit the roads. So, he called an Ola cab, and an SMS buzzed his cell phone.

"...3 times peak time charge is applicable on this booking...," read the Ola message. In a hurry, he did not read the message, and rode the cab to his office. But the driver's demand and simultaneous Ola message asking him to hand over Rs 994 left him gaping. And, then he read the first message.

Yet, he did not understand "3 times of the peak charges". The driver cleared his head. "Since there is a massive demand and supply mismatch for cabs due to "Odd and Even" scheme, the formula is arrived at of three times more than peak charges. It could be much higher if demand is more...," he expounded the formula. 

Mithilesh Kumar's car stayed at home, but he rode a four-wheeled vehicle only, and was fleeced three times more money than he normally would have paid. The "Odd and Even" scheme looted him. Yet, Delhi did not see less number of cars on his account. 

Incidentally, he has paid road tax for 15 years in advance. But Kejriwal has not yet said a word if the road tax would be returned, since freedom to ply on roads has been curbed. Kejriwal, in fact, has not yet answered allegations levelled against him and his government in the purported sting operation where palms were greased with crisp papers embossed with Gandhi's image and singed by RBI Governor for distributing CNG stickers (exempt from "Odd and Even").

ASHOK Kumar Walia is a bachelor and a doctor by profession. He had been Minister for PWD, Health, and Urban Development during the 15 long years of the Sheila Dikshit government in Delhi. 

Once he went to Tokyo. There he saw flyovers dotting the city all around. He came back, and told his officials that Delhi needed flyovers. The road congestion was so long and painful, that most of the motorists would be stuck at traffic signals for 15 to 20 minutes. Walia began building flyovers. The Supreme Court in the meantime mandated migration of public transport to the CNG mode. Delhi became better and cleaner.

Walia went to Tokyo again after a gap of about a decade. He saw flyovers over flyovers. He enquired from his hosts, "why do you need flyovers over flyovers?".

"The original flyovers were choking due to rise in vehicular population, and, hence, new flyovers over them were needed," quipped the Japanese host.

The Delhi minister came back and told his officials the need for flyovers over flyovers. An elevated ring road over the existing ring road was planned. 

But Walia and Sheila Dikshit by then had become unwanted in a city where the Gandhian activist Anna Hazare and motley of television channels glibly allowed Arvind Kejriwal to become an answer to all the ills afflicting Delhi.   

The elite camp-follower of Kejriwal glibly argue that many western countries have also tried such a formula to curb pollution. But no such people has yet stopped using four-wheeled vehicles to commute to their work places themselves. 

That Delhi has a remarkable elasticity to dip in their pockets to buy a second car is a fact not worth repeating. Such a plan failed miserably in Mexico. And, Delhi is more closer to Mexico than London surely is lost out to the logical minds of the camp-followers of Kejriwal.

A tourist from Madhya Pradesh was arguably the first person to be challaned on the commencement of the second phase of "Odd and Even" scheme. He told the cops that he had not known of such a thing since he had been driving for a couple of days. But he had to part with Rs 2,000. 

HE may have rightly thought that sometimes the state is a thug, and encourages people to become a bigger thug.