---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Sanjay <sanjay@cloudatix.com>
Date: Wed, Oct 14, 2015 at 12:53 PM
Subject: Travesty of Justice
To: seema.sapra@googlemail.com, seema.sapra@gmail.com
From: Sanjay <sanjay@cloudatix.com>
Date: Wed, Oct 14, 2015 at 12:53 PM
Subject: Travesty of Justice
To: seema.sapra@googlemail.com, seema.sapra@gmail.com
Hi Seema
I accidently came across your blog while trying to find a resolute on the issues that I am facing with Ministry of Railways. It is apparent that that there is high level of corruption and malfeasance rampant among the Railways officials and there is nexus to protect each other right from the bureaucrat to the Ministers. I will be preaching the choir if would narrate the sequel in having knocked all possible doors from the Chairman Railway Board to the Minister for last 6 months. It leaves only one option of Arbitration which will take the case for years by which time these officials either get transferred or retire.
I am writing to you with anticipation that you have gone through this trauma for years and your wisdom could guide me how to go forward in such scenarios. I am enclosing the initial complaint that I had given to Minister of State for Railways for giving you the background on the case. If you feel appropriate, I would like meet you to discuss this.
Regards
Sanjay Sharma
Tel No. 9818775557
I accidently came across your blog while trying to find a resolute on the issues that I am facing with Ministry of Railways. It is apparent that that there is high level of corruption and malfeasance rampant among the Railways officials and there is nexus to protect each other right from the bureaucrat to the Ministers. I will be preaching the choir if would narrate the sequel in having knocked all possible doors from the Chairman Railway Board to the Minister for last 6 months. It leaves only one option of Arbitration which will take the case for years by which time these officials either get transferred or retire.
I am writing to you with anticipation that you have gone through this trauma for years and your wisdom could guide me how to go forward in such scenarios. I am enclosing the initial complaint that I had given to Minister of State for Railways for giving you the background on the case. If you feel appropriate, I would like meet you to discuss this.
Regards
Sanjay Sharma
Tel No. 9818775557
I have informed Sanjay Sharma that I am unable to help with this matter. The attachment to this email is reproduced below.
Ref: Cloudatix -
Biz / RailtelMOS /2014-15/31
May
31st, 2015
Hon’ble Shri Manoj Sinha
Minister of State
- Railways
Ministry of
Railways
Rail Bhawan, New
Delhi
Dear
Sir,
I
want to bring to your kind notice that there is serious corruption and malfeasance rampant in Railtel Corporation
of India Ltd, wholly subsidiary of Ministry of Railways which entails in
engaging with their partners swaying them to invest in a collaboration project
and then asking partners to grease them or else they make it impossible for the
partners to survive. I would like to present the facts as below:
·
Cloudatix is a young start-up founded by Mr. Sanjay Sharma possessing
over 25 years of IT and Telecom experience in Product and Applications
Development having headed the companies such as Alcatel, Lucent, SAS and
Reliance. He was Managing Director for
SAS and Executive President for Reliance heading their Data Center and
Managed Services. Cloudatix is an approved Channel Partner, System Integrator
and Managed Service Provider for Railtel and Power Grid for the past two years.
·
Cloudatix has successfully obtained/enabled over Rs 120 Cr business for Railtel with innovative ideas with an
objective that Railtel could endeavor into new domains and mutually our company
could also grow. Railtel didn’t possess the domain expertise in this area. The
major orders won were SASEC Bhutan, Delhi University and Hartron.
·
Enclosure
1 – Delhi University – Rs 23.31 Cr
·
Enclosure
2 – Hartron LOA – Rs 91.6 Cr
·
We have brought the issues of high-handedness of Northern Region and impropriety
by the officers of Northern Region on several instances to CMD – Sh R K Bahuguna and other Board of Directors
in writing and in person establishing the impropriety and that its “either
their way or highway”
·
Enclosure
3 - Mail highlighting the few incidents
( More details and evidence can be provided)
·
Sequence of Facts on Hartron –
Project (Value is 91.6 Cr with an additional upside of Rs 40-50 Cr) We have won a large project –
Hartron for managing the data center and network with a value of Rs 91.6 Cr (with Gross Margin of Rs 33.83 Cr)
having additional upside of Rs 40-50 Cr in a 50:50 partnership with Railtel as
lead bidder based on a pre-bid agreement for being the technology partner and
responsible for executing the project in entirety whereas Railtel will only be
a lead bidder.
·
Enclosure
4 – Letter from Cloudatix to Raitel for participating in Hartron RFP
·
Enclosure
5 – Pre-bid agreement signed between Railtel and Cloudatix on 9th
May 2014
o FOR EXECUTION OF HARTRON
PROJECT, Railtel and Cloudatix signed a Pre-bid agreement on 9th May
2014 on PROFIT SHARING basis at 50:50 percent with Railtel to bid as a Lead
partner and laid down detailed terms and conditions governing the execution of
the contract once it is allotted to Railtel by the Haryana Govt.
·
Enclosure
5 - Pre-bid Agreement – Clause 5.4
o It was specifically mentioned
in the Pre-bid agreement that post project allotment, a formal agreement will
be signed based on the conditions
indicated in the Pre-Bid agreement, which inter alia provided for profit
sharing at 50% : 50% basis,
management of the project by Joint
Committees like Steering Committee, Joint Works Committee, Committee on
Expenses, equally represented by Railtel and Cloudatix, and detailed duties, obligations of the two
partners, joint committees and procedure for transferring share of profit to
partners within 7 days. On its part,
Cloudatix will provide a BG of 3 %
of total value in the first year to remain committed for the venture.
·
Enclosure
5 – Pre-bid Agreement – Clause 1.1, Clause 3 and Clause 5.9
o Based on the Pre-bid conditions
and RFP requirement, we started the software development, process development
and deployed resources starting from September 2014 and stepped up to deploying
over 80 manpower resources on-site as of
today.
·
Enclosure
6 – Mail dated 6th Oct 2014
o Cloudatix started the first
phase implementation on-site at Chandigarh from December with 22 resources but
had to step to an emergency situation of Hartron requiring immediate takeover
of SDC and SWAN by having to deploy over 80 resources within a week which
Cloudatix successfully accomplished and delivered.
o In utter disregard to
the Pre-bid agreement, the Railtel instead of signing a formal agreement for project
execution as envisaged in the Pre-bid agreement, started issuing various
unilateral internal office procedure orders for project execution activities
and even excluded Cloudatix from the various committees, namely, Steering
Committee, Committee on Expenses and various other activities and avoiding the
formalization of the agreement.
o Not agreeing to the illegal demands
of Railtel’s NR team ( Shri R K Goel,
Executive Director (North) Shri Jagdeep
Singh – General Manager Marketing and Shri B K Chaturvedi - Deputy General Manager – Finance) demanding
special provisions for their personal gains, the group of officers started
harassing us, by not signing the formal project execution agreement and
continually changing the terms of the agreement so that we can’t sign the
agreement
o As per the Clause 2.3 – Pre-bid
Agreement (Enclosure 5), it was agreed that “In the event, Railtel successfully
wins the bid, a detailed and excusive management and consultancy agreement
incorporating the terms of instant pre-bid teaming agreement will be
formulated”
o As per the Clause 1.2.1 –
Pre-bid Agreement (Enclosure 5), it was also agreed that “in case of any
discrepancy or conflict between the Management and Consultancy Agreement and
Pre-bid teaming agreement, the terms of the Pre-bid teaming agreement shall
prevail”
§ Agreement was sent to Railtel by
Cloudatix dated 10th Nov based on Pre-bid Agreement
o Enclosure 7
§ Agreement reverted by Jagdeep dated
13th Nov with only one suggested changes - * Clause 2.1 “ termination clause should be
there with some conditions”
o Enclosure 8 – Clause 2.1
§ The agreement was discussed
with Sh Jagdeep and Sh B K Chaturvedi on 17th Nov and it was agreed
the termination will as per the pre-bid agreement clause and a clause for
consultant be added. Clause 2.1 (Enclosure 9) – “ the same shall be co-terminus
with the Hartron Agreement. Neither party shall be entitled to terminate the
contract as long as Hartron Agreement is in existence”
o Enclosure 9 – Clause 2.1 and Clause 2.3
§ Shri Jagdeep sent a final
agreement from Railtel’s side on dated 7th January by inserting
clause 1.1 for their own internal procedure order and added a clause 2.1 on
termination – “the agreement can be
terminated by two months notice due to a) Hartron terminating the contract b)
SLA breach for continuous two months c) System integrator intends to quit”.
Rest of the agreement was same as enclosure 9
o Enclosure 10 – Changes in Clause 1.1 and Clause
2.1
§ Shri Jagdeep on March 5th
suddenly sent new conditions and changes completely
violating the pre-bid agreement and their previous sent agreement to arm
twist in meeting their illegal demands. or suffer an approximate loss of Rs 6
Cr - 7 Cr by Cloudatix from its share. The conditions are impossible to be met.
:
·
7% of the total revenue (Rs 6.42 Cr) was newly inserted to be deducted
from the 50%:50% share, which was against the pre-bid agreement substantially
reducing the Cloudatix Profit share.
·
New clause for additional BG for Rs 2.85 Cr was added to be paid by
Cloudatix
·
All additional business that will come from Hartron agreement was
taken out
·
Unreasonable Railtel expenses were added to be loaded into the Hartron
project to cut the profit share of Cloudatix
·
All Railtel indirect expenses to be loaded into Hartron against
pre-bid
·
Unreasonable Termination clauses against the pre-bid agreement
o Enclosure 11
§ The issues of arm twisting and
unreasonable terms were brought to the notice of CMD and other board of
directors and steering committee comprising of Sh Manohar, GM - BD and Smt Madhulika – GM Finance were
asked to resolve and close the agreement. The agreement was discussed and it
was endorsed by the steering committee that terms proposed by NR were violating
the pre-bid agreement and it should be signed along the pre-bid agreement. The
recommendations were sent to Board of Directors to move the project to corporate
office and remove the current team from the project.
§ I believe CMD suggested to his
board members that we couldn’t let down NR in front of partner even if NR is
wrong so lets find other way for which the steering committee was tasked to
explore new options of engagement. Steering committee called me for a meeting
on 16th May to devise a new model reducing our scope from the
pre-bid agreement and changing from profit share model to a standard SI
agreement with 13% commission same as Delhi University agreement. With no
alternative left being pushed to wall, we agreed to their terms incurring approximate
loss of at least Rs 7 Cr – 8 Cr across 5 years against the original profit
sharing model and accepted the agreement with the steering committee and it was
sent to the CMD and BODs for final approval.
·
Enclosure
12 dated 16th May 2015
§ On 18th May, CMD
suggested to the steering committee if they can convince us with 8% instead of
13% as commission then we can go ahead with the signing of agreement. It meant
a further loss for us in the order of Rs 3 – 4 Cr across 5 years but due to the
fact that we had huge payments choked at Railtel and with no other channel to
address our grievance, we even succumbed to this proposal.
·
Enclosure
13 dated 18th May, 2015
§ Summarizing the above sequence,
it can be established that First NR team agreed to go by the standard pre-bid
agreement terms but realizing that their % cut is not being concluded they
started harassing by adding new terms which are financially unviable and
isolating us from the project, OEMs and freezing all the payments for one
pretext or the other.
o Not agreeing to the illegal demands
of Railtel NR team who were asking 10% cut of the overall revenue for
themselves or 2/3rd of the total profit that Cloudatix will earn for
distribution to their officers was
rejected by me, the group of officers started harassing me, stopping my due payments for months
together not only for this project but other projects as well, not paying
salary payments to 80 workers agreement.
§ Railtel is not raising the
invoice for the first quarter at Hartron from January to March despite several
reminders from our side of the value of Rs 1.8 Cr to Hartron so that we can’t
raise our invoice. This is not only against the accounting practices but it is
to harass us for not getting our share of the profit.
§ Railtel has done the same at
Delhi University where there was more then Rs 4.8 Cr pending with our share of
13% until March 31st but they delayed raising invoices and not
closing on the open issues that is causing financial loss to Railtel and us.
·
Enclosure 14 dated 21st May, 2015
§ Railtel is holding the salary
payments of the employees, which is not part of Consultancy agreement or
Pre-bid agreement for the best reasons known to them. On one hand they are not
paying the salaries and other expenses despite repeated reminders on the other
hand they are talking to our employees trying to persuade them to join Railtel
through some other agency that is causing huge credibility loss for us and this
act is unethical and illegal.
o The Hartron project currently
has a gross profit margin of Rs 33.83 Cr against the revenue of Rs 91.6 Cr and
cost of Rs 57.8 Cr with a further potential to negotiate with each OEMs for
getting higher margin. There are more than 25 OEMs (Original Equipment
Manufacturer) in the project costing out of which there are two major OEM
components – CISCO (Network) and
Tritronics (UPS) valued at Rs 37.3 Cr and Rs 14 .4 Cr respectively against
their cost of Rs 19.79 Cr and Rs 5.6 Cr respectively. NR team is completely
keeping us away from the OEM negotiations so as to finalize the agreements at
the higher cost against/cost overrun violating the pre-bid agreement– Clause
No. 4.1
o Enclosure 15 – Financial Summary for the Project
§ Cloudatix is an approved Cisco
Channel partner but the NR team has intentionally brought a new channel partner
– Velocis without following any process including informing us violating the
pre-bid agreement. When we questioned them about their entry, it was informed
to us that it was mandated by Cisco. On enquiring from Cisco – Sanjay Dewan and
Ravi Hadke on dated 30th March 2015, it was revealed in presence of
GM – Business Development, Manohar Raja, Shri R K Goel and Shri Jagdeep, it was
revealed by Cisco team that for them Cloudatix was a Channel Partner in this
whereas NR brought a new partner Velocis into the project that has to add its
own margin. Velocis quoted price is higher by Rs 1.9 Cr not including taxes against the quoted price
by Cloudatix for the same Bill of Material.
The activity for finalizing the OEM and price negotiation is part of the
joint responsibility of Cloudatix and Railtel through the joint committees as
per the pre-bid agreement but Railtel – NR team is intentionally keeping us
away from any discussion and price negotiations.
·
Enclosure
16
§ NR team comprising of Shri RK Goel,
Shri Jagdeep and Shri B K Chaturvedi has directly completed the negotiations
with Tritronics without engaging Cloudatix for new UPS at a higher price then
the Uniline quote that was recommended by Cloudatix. The AMC price for
Tritronics and Uniline is Rs 11 Cr and Rs 5.9 Cr respectively but NR is still
going ahead with Tritronics at the higher prices and have placed the orders to
them for new UPS – 4 KVA – 84 Nos and 7.5 KVA
- 9 sets at a total value of Rs 97.3 Lakhs on dated 13th
March 2015. We believe, Sh Jagdeep issued this order without going through any
due process and approvals. NR team has also placed the order for the repair of
UPS and site audit, which is outside the scope of RFP, and proposal submitted
to Hartron and will negatively impact the margin for Railtel/Cloudatix..
·
Enclosure : 17
§ If the above method is executed, the potential loss envisaged for only
these two OEMs – CISCO and Tritronics would in the order of Rs 8.70 Cr for
Railtel/Cloudatix.
o We have repeatedly approached
CMD – Sh R.K Bahuguna and other Board of Directors through various mails and
in-person meetings to appraise them with the sufferings we are facing due to NR
team. CMD – Sh R K Bahuguna instituted the steering committee comprising of GM
– Technology and GM – Finance to investigate the matter which we believe,
suggested moving the execution and purchases to Corporate Office and the
current team of Railtel should be removed.
o We
believe, it was also seconded and recommended by the two board members –
Director Network and Planning – Shri Seshagiri Rao and Director Finance – Shri
N K Gupta to immediately move the project to Corporate Office and remove the
current Northern Region team. The recommendation is still pending for
clearance from CMD – Sh R K Bahuguna for the reasons best known to him. This is
intentionally being done to keep us away from the finalization of OEMs and
other decision making in the projects, which eventually will cause degeneration
of profit and credibility loss for us.
o We would request for your kind
intervention on this by setting a probe against the consortium running the
corrupt practices and restoring the justice as per the pre-bid agreement
signed. On citing my grievance with some of the good officers in Railtel, I am being
told that “we can’t act wiser than the
king” or that “this nexus is
unstoppable” or that “by the time we
go for arbitration and get any ruling in our favor they would have retired long
ago” leaves us with no choice but to approach your good office. I am
willing to provide further information as may be desired during the probe.
o Prayer
§ Immediate Probe and restoring justice for Cloudatix
§ Railtel must immediately
release all the pending payments and raise the invoices to the customer at
least until the March ending so that we can raise our share of the invoice.
§ Railtel must comply with the
pre-bid agreement and sign the agreement based on the pre-agreed terms without
bringing in new conditions and terms.
§ In reference to the meeting on
9th May with CMD and BODs, Cloudatix has already submitted the BG of
Rs 10 Lakhs that will apply up to the Cloudatix – profit share of Rs 3 Cr @ 3%
in the first year which is very unlikely. However, should Cloudatix makes more
the Rs 3 Cr of revenue in any one year, we shall pay the additional BG for the
additional amount at 3%.
§ Railtel must on immediate basis
engage us on the OEMs contract finalization and communicate all
issues/communications related to the customer and project transparently so that
a joint corrective actions can be taken without impacting the profit margin and
credibility.
·
Enclosure
18
Regards
Sanjay Sharma
CEO
Cloudatix – Biz India Ventures Pvt Ltd
Tel No# 98108775557
Copies
to:
·
Shri A K Mital – Chairman Railway Board
·
Shri Navin Tandon - Member Electrical
No comments:
Post a Comment