SpeakAsians

SpeakAsia - A brief from its Origin.......

February/March 2010 Speakasia online Pte. Ltd. (SAOL) a company registered in Singapore starts its operation in India.Basically Speak Asia registration in Singapore With Number of 200618809D.
Speak Asia Online Line (SAOL) starts their operation as a Paid Surveys Provider company, in its first or its launch phase, and its tag line was “We Value your Opinion”. As When People Joined and Answers the Surveys they get Paid .
Because of the unique idea combined with aggressive field support from the company, SAOL grew at a phenomenon speed and in short time of less than a year SAOL panel size grew to a whopping 20 lakh panelists.
The huge size of the SAOL family along with a pan India presence spread over every demographic possible made it the biggest provider of survey panels on the international panel exchanges.
All the panelists have always been paid promptly and regularly by the company till the 12th May, 2011, But on 11th May A news Channel Named "Star News" show a news Star News Exposes Speak Asia and and Some of the Politicians such as Kirit Somaya as Letter by Dr. Kirit Somaiya Against Speak Asia on 18 May 2011 .On 16th We ( SAOL ) arrange speak asia press conference where all our Speak Asia Management Including Mr. Manoj Kumar CEO , Tarak Bajpai ( COO ) , Narayanan Rajagopalan , Mr. Vivek Gautam ( Chief Marketing Officer ) , Sanjeev Mehta ( Country Head Sales ) and Sanjeev Dwived. In This Press Conference Mr . Narayanan Rajagopalan Speak Asia Explained About Paid Surveys and try to Understand the Speak Asia Business Model But after that the bank accounts were closed by the company bankers.
M/s United Overseas Bank, Singapore, on 27th May, 2011 probably due to the cautionary circular sent out by the RBI vied circular No. DBS.CO.PPD No.16237/11.01.005/2010-11 dated 23rd May, 2011.
SAOL has been approaching the RBI and various other appropriate agencies to seek permission for establishing their permanent establishment and for restarting the operations and restarting the payments to their panelists (us).
An Individual not connected to SAOL filed a criminal PIL in the Mumbai high court against the Government of Maharashtra, seeking directions to the police to set up a suitable mechanism to avoid any sort of internet fraud to safeguard gullible small time investors.
The Hon. High Court presided by her ladyship Justice Ranjana Desai was pleased to instruct the EOW to file their affidavit on the mechanism in place to safeguard the investors. She had made some observations which were prime facie observations not in any way pointing to the SAOL.
The EOW erred in their interpretation of the Hon. Ladyship and started investigating SAOL with a vengeance. The investigation arises out of a FIR filed by one Mr. Khosla, who has been a panelist of the company and has been regularly getting paid by the company till the bank accounts were closed in May, 2011.
Some FIRs have been filed by few aggrieved panelists all over the country. It is not the case of any complainant that they have not received payments before the bank account was unfortunately closed down.
SAOL is on record and are committed to restart the payments as soon as the banking channels are restored.
This sudden stoppage of operations and stoppage of payments of SAOL has adversely affected us the 20 lakh Indians who are the panelists of the company.
All the 20 lakh Panelists had joined the business module to enhance their earnings and see a positive change in their living standards and until May 2011 have experienced the fruits of this association many of whom have experienced a total positive change in their life style.
It has been almost three months since the monies have freezed up and still all the panelists (barring a few who have complained) are patiently waiting and support the company’s endeavor to get out of the problems and restart the operations.
The present Association is formed, based and arising, out of support E mails received from all over the country.
Speak Asia Association has filed a Speak Asia PIL before the Hon. High Court at Mumbai. Which is now posted for 7th September, 2011, When the Government of Maharashtra is to file its reply.
Some of the panelists have independently moved the Supreme court and are in the process of filing a PIL before the Hon. Supreme Court asking for ad interim relief and prayed that the monies which are seized by the authorities in India be brought under the custody of the Supreme court and under its supervision be distributed among the panelists.
Important to note here that between Genx Bazaar GOA 9 - 11 May 2011organized one of the biggest consumer gathering under the name and style of Gen X held in Baga, Goa.
Gen X saw various reputed brands like, Provouge, Reebok, Gitanjali jewellery, American Tourister,Samsonite, IFB Electronics, Flying Machine, TVC skyshop, and Skoda Automobiles to name a few,display their wares for the Speakasians to purchase. A whopping over Rs. 4 to 5 crores were transacted in one day of shopping making it a record single day shopping record.
The end of Gen X was to usher in the company’s ambitious second phase and the tag line now is “Consumer empowerment”
The company has grown from being a survey based company and is now into as they call the 5th ‘P’ of marketing i.e. PRECISION MASS MARKETING.
This second phase was to unleash a revolutionary phase where the company was planning to use this humongous size of its panelists and use their purchasing power to provide the panelists with international quality of products at prizes which were half of what these products are presently available at.
We the Panelists feel that because of the unprecedented success of the company and its unveiling of its revolutionary new product based platform, has sent jitters in the trade in general and caught the envy of the company’s competitors.
This unknown enemy of the company is presently orchestrating and unleashing a vicious and malicious negative campaign against the company.
The Architect of the campaign against the company has unknowingly harmed the interest of 20 lakh Indians and has affected Lakhs of marginal players whose kitchen fires were being run on the earnings they received from SAOL.
The stoppage of the legitimate operations of SAOL has in fact violated the basic fundamental right of each individual “The right to livelihood”

Who is Sucheta Dalal

Sucheta Dalal is presently the Managing Editor of Moneylife Magazine, which is a personal finance fortnightly. Earlier, she was a columnist for the Indian Express and Consulting Editor for The Financial Express. She has previously written for the Business Standard and The Economic Times, and in the 1990s was Financial Editor of The Times of India. She is a Founder Trustee of Moneylife Foundation, a not-for-profit which is spearheading the effort to spread financial literacy in India.
Since 2000, Dalal was a serving member of the 'Investor Protection and Education Fund' for six years, this fund was established by the Government of India's Department of Company Affairs. She was a member of the 'Narayana Murthy Committee on Corporate Governance' think tank instituted by the Securities & Exchange Board of India (SEBI) and was also on SEBI's Primary Market Advisory Committee. She is on Bank of Baroda's services committee and a Trustee of the Consumer Education & Research Centre, Ahmedabad.
In 1992, Dalal was awarded the Femina Woman of Substance award. The same year, the Media Foundation awarded her the Chameli Devi Award for excellence in journalism.
In 2006, Dalal was awarded the Government of India's prestigious Padma Shri in recognition of her journalistic contributions.
Dalal is the co-author of The Scam: Who Won, who Lost, who Got Away, which investigates the role of several figures in the April 1992 crash of the Indian Stock Exchange. The book was written together with her (now) husband, Debasis Basu, who is also a journalist by profession but a Chartered Accountant by training. As of 2007, The Scam is in its seventh print run and fourth extended edition.
Her more recent book, A. D. Shroff: Titan of Finance and Free Enterprise is a biography of Ardeshir Darabshaw Shroff commissioned by the 'Forum of Free Enterprise which Shroff had co-founded in 1956. The book "draws upon the personal papers of A.D. Shroff, the Tata Central Archives, the papers and libraries of the Bank of India, HDFC, and several other institutions with which [Shroff] was associated."
Dalal has a bachelor's degree in statistics from Karnatak University and a bachelor's degree and a Masters degree in law from the University of Mumbai .

Multi-level marketing: Seeking legitimacy

Sucheta dalal

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has released a discussion paper on its plans to regulate private fund pools to reduce fraud and market risk. While some private equity (PE) fund managers expressed surprise at this move, we are told a few top PE funds support the plan because registration and regulation, they believe, will give them an identity that is separate from speculators, such as hedge funds, who also take the Mauritius route to India.
Meanwhile, we learn that multi-level marketing schemes (MLMs) and others with powerful political friends are also lobbying for greater legitimacy. They have stepped up pressure to amend the Prize Chits and Money Circulation Schemes (Banning) Act of 1978 which lumps MLMs along with dubious pyramid marketing schemes making them illegal in India. The rest of the world makes a distinction and bans pyramid schemes, even when they pretend to sell a product/service.
Along with dubious Ponzi schemes, beleaguered collective schemes are also seeking legitimacy. For instance, Osian’s Art Fund, which is unable to repay investors, is seeking to place its assets under a trusteeship company. So does the Jaipur-based PACL India Ltd (or Pearls) which has collected a massive Rs20,000 crore on the pretext of investing in land and expanding its network through MLM. PACL has appointed a top Supreme Court lawyer and is shopping for a trustee company to legitimise its claimed land holdings on the Indo-Pak border.
Even controversial Speak Asia was desperately trying to register a presence in India and diversify from shady surveys into real products to re-position itself as a direct selling company. It probably hoped to follow the politically-connected GoldQuest, (reborn as Q-Net) selling a bunch of products, including watches and holiday packages, with investments ranging from Rs30,000 to Rs7 lakh. There are over 10,000 (police estimates) quick-money schemes operating in every state and digging a hole into the savings of people by luring them with false promises. Unfortunately, no regulator wants to touch these ‘private fund pools’.

Sucheta Dalal

Who is Sucheta Dalal

Andhra Pradesh government banned SpeakAsia ads in there state.

The state government has banned SpeakAsia Online Pvt Ltd from issuing advertisements and any material connected with money circulation scheme.
A decision to this effect was taken by the state government following recommendation by the Crime Investigation Department (CID). So far, the CID officials have arrested six persons for carrying out the operations of SpeakAsia Online Pvt Ltd.
"Every copy of the newspaper and every copy of the publication containing such material and advertisement connected with any Prize Chits and Money Circulation Scheme (banning) Act, 1978 as promoted or conducted by SpeakAsia Online Pvt Ltd/ Haren Ventures Pvt Ltd in contravention of the provisions of the said Act shall be forfeited to the state government," an official release issued here on Tuesday said.