THE CELERITAS FILES

Chapter 9/ 28

Wednesday, December 21, 2016

Hotel Radisson Blu Marina, Connaught Place, New Delhi

Sivakumar sat in the coffee shop of Hotel Radisson Marina, impatiently checking his watch. It was 3:00 pm.

About two hours back, when he was having lunch in his cabin, Sivakumar had got an unexpected call from Mr. Sanjay Sharma, the Founder and Managing Director of SparkWiz India, one of Bliksem's biggest competitors. The call had lasted for hardly a minute with Sharma informing him that he was coming to Connaught Place in the afternoon and suggesting that they meet for a cup of coffee. He claimed that he had 'something interesting to discuss'.

Sivakumar had strongly considered turning down his request as his equation with Sharma had been far from pleasant. However, curiosity got the better of him and he agreed to have a quick coffee chat with Sharma at the coffee shop of Hotel Radisson Blu Marina, which was a stone's throw away from Bliksem's office.

Sanjay Sharma came from a rich and influential business family and had a large amount of capital available at his disposal when he decided to start his own battery manufacturing company called SparkWiz India in 2013. A few months since his company started operations, the Government of India significantly reduced the import duty imposed on batteries, resulting in the Chinese players storming into the Indian market with extremely low-priced batteries. These Chinese players ended up establishing tie-ups with all the large Indian handset manufacturers, making companies like Bliksem lose a significant portion of their business. However, Sharma was not the kind of person to give up. He bribed some of his political connections and pushed them into providing heavy subsidies to SparkWiz, reducing his cost of manufacturing. In this way, his pricing became extremely competitive and SparkWiz stood out as the only strong competitor to the Chinese companies.

While the Chinese companies were busy doing tie-ups with Indian handset manufacturers, Sharma decided to aggressively target the replacement batteries market. He realized that it would take a while for Chinese companies to establish a strong distribution network of their low-priced replacement batteries in India. His only competition was companies like Bliksem who were thriving only in this market but he was easily able to eliminate them because of his low pricing. In hardly three years, SparkWiz reached a turnover of nearly four hundred million rupees.

Sharma was known to be a ruthless businessman with absolutely no scruples. He had paid a massive bribe to acquire the Government subsidies and had also used unethical means to force mobile accessories retailers into exclusively selling SparkWiz batteries across India. This made sure that companies like Bliksem saw their revenue number going down to zero overnight. The affected companies, including Bliksem, lodged a complaint with the antitrust authorities against SparkWiz for 'using unethical practices to monopolize the Indian replacement batteries market'. However, Sharma wriggled out of the mess by bribing the antitrust authorities.

After this incident, the Managing Directors of some of these complaining companies started receiving death threats from the underworld lest they thought of complaining again. The matter was forgotten and soon, many of these companies went into liquidation.

Sivakumar despised Sharma more than anybody in the industry but was forced to be cordial during their interactions. He believed that professionalism was a must in any form of business. His professionalism, coupled with curiosity, made him give in to Sharma's request for meeting up for coffee that afternoon.

At around 3:05 pm, Sharma walked into the coffee shop, dressed in a dark gray suit with a white shirt and a maroon tie. He was a tall man with broad shoulders and a bit of a paunch. His salt and pepper hair and the wrinkles on his face gave the impression that he was in his early forties.