THE CELERITAS FILES

Chapter 6/ 28

Friday, December 02, 2016

Bliksem Corporate Office, Barakhamba Road, New Delhi, India

It was a typical December afternoon in New Delhi with the sun shining brightly in a cloudless sky. The temperature was in the early teens and the people of the city were already in their sweaters and overcoats considering the fact that winter had arrived in the city.

It was 4:00 pm and Connaught Place, the heart of New Delhi, was buzzing with commercial activity. One of the largest commercial centers of the capital of India, Connaught Place was a large circular area with seven radial roads spreading out in all directions from the circle. It was enclosed by seven similar looking blocks of broad, two-storied buildings, all of which were painted white in color and had a distinctly British flavor owing to their Georgian architectural finish. These comprised of restaurants, bars, coffee shops, clothing boutiques and every kind of store that one could think of. A ninety-by-sixty sized garden, known as the Central Park was at the center of this circle with a sixty-three-meter long pole which hoisted the national flag of India. There was fast-moving traffic on the street in between the garden and the buildings. The street on the backside of these white buildings, termed as the outer circle, comprised quite a few high rises which formed the office space for a number of large corporates. This street was also equally crowded and a number of cars were slipping away into adjacent lanes where the high rises continued.

The office of Bliksem India was located on one of these radial roads, termed as Barakhamba Road, in a twelve-storied commercial complex known as Express Towers. The office was two and a half thousand square in terms of area, located on the tenth floor and was essentially divided into two sections: the business section which was about a thousand square feet large and the R&D laboratory space which was another one and a half thousand square feet.

Harrish Sivakumar was sitting in his cabin which lied in the business section of the office, fidgeting with a pen lying on his table. His meeting with François Leroy had taken place a couple days ago and Ramamurthy had promised to get back to him with feedback before the weekend.

He had received the following message from Ramamurthy in the morning that day – 'Discussion with François regarding Project Celeritas today at 1:00 pm; Will call as soon as it is done'.

Sivakumar was staring at his cell phone eagerly, waiting for it to ring. It was already past 4:00 pm. The longer the discussion, the better it would be for Bliksem, Sivakumar thought to himself. Suddenly, the loud sound of the phone vibrating on his glass table made him in his seat. He quickly grabbed it and answered.

"Hello."

"Hello Harrish," Ramamurthy's voice boomed with excitement, "I have some excellent news."

Sivakumar's heart leaped.

"Tell me all about it, Vinoth," he replied nervously.

"François Leroy has agreed to take this forward immediately. He has asked me to discuss the next steps with you right away," came the excited response.

Sivakumar could not believe his ears. For a moment, he felt like Ramamurthy was exaggerating.

"You can't be serious, Vinoth," he replied, "A two-hour pitch and he agreed to buy the stake and do the entire co-branding thing? This sounds like a dream."

Ramamurthy laughed out loudly on the phone.

"Calm down, my friend. Even that dream will come true very soon," he said joyfully.

"So what next steps are you talking about?"

"Multinationals like Groupe Leroy follow a standard procedure for such transactions, so please listen to this carefully," Ramamurthy said slowly, "François has asked me to instantly sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement with Bliksem and to have an immediate third-party test to test the effectiveness of your sample. The results would be out in a couple of days. Then, we would go into a deeper due diligence of the product, the technology and also of your company as a whole, including all the legal and financial aspects of Bliksem which could last for a couple of months. You can say that these are the preparations for the marriage between Leroy and Bliksem."