I wanted to write this earlier but I couldn't find time.  This event takes me back nearly 12 years when I was in Singapore working for Apar Infotech Pvt Limited  which was started by Rajeev Srivastava. Rajeev Srivastava is an interesting character. He then walked away with entire database of Mastech Corporation and then split Mastech Corporation to start his own company.  He is married to someone in Apar Industries - I think it is N.D. Desai's daughter so he had the financial background from his in-laws.

This guy Rajeev has a very sugar tongue, is a ISCON showman. In Singapore, he will do Pooja by calling his employees. This will make him look good.  Rajeev Srivastava, then put in Sachin Lokeshwar to poach employees of Mastech Corporation. While there was rivalry going on at that time and the news was all over the place that Mastech was split in two by Rajeev, at that time the initial employees in Apar Infotech, Singapore were offered at least 25 to 40% increment.  Mastech at that time did not have the financial backing of Apar and just was a mere spectator.

This did not stop there, Rajeev actually lured a few people to take away resources from Mastech and place them in other companies. Rajeev actually personally handed over employee HR records to people. I was one of them and actually got a decent money at that time because of placement activity.  As I came to know more about Rajeev from his inner circle, I started disliking him more. He had a relationship with someone called - 'Sarika' in India. And after starting this venture, within short time Rajeev got Sarika in the office. His inner circle including Sachin and few other consulting companies knew this when Rajeev just had 50 employees.  I saw this saga. How can a man who is a strong believe of Krishna movement do all this i.e sell out company's HR files, get involved in poaching and have affairs. I was upset that I was a part of this and decided to fight it out. I directly asked Rajeev on this and paid the price but was worth it. I didn't want to take shabby money.  Rajeev  then eventually moved out from Singapore to US.

It is 12 years now. There is a saying "Kutte ki poonch ko kitni bhi Zameen mein gadh use bahar nikalo to woh tedhi ki tedhi rehti hein".   Gloscon has been doing Drupal development for nearly 4 years.  We had organized our 1st Drupal Camp in Ahmedabad at DAIICT in 2008.  One company employees came there - they were from 'Cignex' -  They didn't sponsor the event but few resources came for some hours and left. But what they did was terribly wrong. In Open Source, people love sharing knowledge and that's how open source flourishes. These resources were from HR department in Cignex and just came there and openly started making offers to our developers. This was brought to my notice and I was really upset they way they went about poaching people. We lost one resource 'Vijay Thummar' who was a Senior Drupal Developer with us  and they made an extremely high offer to him. Sadly Vijay didn't even follow the contract terms and left the very next day. Just imaging what will happen to any company if they lose a critical resource at a day's notice? Vijay didn't even pay his 1 month pay ( which was as per contract) since he did not give Notice.

From this day onwards, Gloscon never remained the same. There was a company in Ahmedabad that had shoddy roots and following very bad business practices.  I did give a little background to my employees about this company's history.

About 6 weeks ago, there was again a call from Ankita Rao - their HR straight at our reception and she said she wanted to speak with our developer.  Receptionist passed it to our Director who straighted her out and told her not to call company line for her poaching activities. I even told them If they want, they can advertise in newspapers, etc and if they call again this number, I was going to file a police complaint for harassment. I even sent an email to them.

Cignex did not stop at that. There were 2 trainees working with us as interns. We trained them in Drupal and made them offers. Both the trainees - Swati Sharma and Pooja Mehta knew about the unethical practices Cignex follows. We even clarified with them about the contract we had with them that they can't work with a competitor for 3 years in 50 kms radius. Cignex never had Drupal resources and these trainees got free training at company's expense.

Swati informed me that she would not be joining us because she had exam prep for BITS Pilani and Pooja Mehta took early leaves for documentation purpose. I just came to know both joined Cignex. I was lured into a job 12 years ago by unethical company which I still curse myself for.  I am still contemplating what I need to do to stop this from Cignex or whether to take action and if so what against the trainees.   It is exactly actions like this that make you hate the India based companies and Indian developers. They just don't understand ethics and values.  Pooja Mehta and Swati Sharma lied. It certainly hurt me because they could have discussed this with us and we could have helped them have right values.  When someone lies, they lose my trust.