Saboteur

by RV Raman

  The doorbell rang just then and Vibha went to answer it. The food they had ordered had arrived. As she paid the delivery man and began setting the table, Nilay went to the MyMagicHat website and checked several products. Nothing seemed to be wrong. Neither the profitable categories nor the loss-making ones seemed to have been tampered with.

  He went to competitor websites for the same products. Once again, nothing seemed out of place. As Moin had said, large competitors were selling electronics and computer accessories at lower prices than MyMagicHat was. However, they were selling refrigerators at slightly higher prices and the delivery times were much longer. Some wouldn’t be delivered before two weeks from the date of the order, while others would take no less than four weeks.

  Clearly, by asking for higher prices and longer delivery times, competitors were pushing customers to MyMagicHat for refrigerators. On the other hand, they were taking away buyers of electronics and computer accessories. Nilay shut the laptop and they sat down to a quiet dinner, where each one of them was lost in thought.

  ‘Tell me,’ Vibha said, midway through the meal. ‘Have you identified the categories or models where your competitors lose money?’

  ‘We have a rough idea, but are not aware of the details. We don’t know anything at a model level, for example. It depends on the agreements they have with sellers, which we are not privy to. And there are far too many products for us to keep track of all.’

  ‘Okay. But assume for a moment that you know where they bleed. Can you then price your products and plan your campaigns to take advantage of that?’

  ‘To bleed them?’

  ‘Uh-huh. Can you do that?’

  ‘Bloody hell!’ Nilay exclaimed. He had gone red in the face as sudden realization hit him. His spoon clattered to the floor. ‘Bloody, bloody hell!

  Moin choked and burst into a coughing fit. Nilay sat stunned for a long moment, glaring at Vibha as if she had said something unpardonable. He was breathing rapidly and he felt as if someone had injected a syringe full of adrenalin into him. The tips of his fingers were tingling and his head was buzzing. His arms had erupted in a rash of goosebumps. A torrent of thoughts swept through his mind as he tried to answer Vibha’s question.

  Could competitors make MyMagicHat sell more of certain products if they wished? Yes! They could play with their prices in a way that encouraged customers to buy from MyMagicHat instead. There were other ways too: they could make their products unavailable in selected pin codes or increase the delivery times to unappealing levels. A customer would then buy the same items from MyMagicHat instead. If they were really desperate, they could even anonymously place Internet advertisements that would lead customers to MyMagicHat. Covertly, very covertly. On the other hand, they could undercut price in profitable categories if they wanted to deprive MyMagicHat of profits. A competitor with deeper pockets could bleed the e-tailer if it so wished.

  Nilay’s breathing calmed. So that was what had happened! The war of attrition had spiked. Competition had quietly widened the unicorn’s wounds to make them bleed. At the same time, they were undercutting it in profitable categories. The result was that MyMagicHat’s sales mix of products had taken a turn for the worse. The budgets had assumed a mix that was largely unchanging.

  ‘How would competition know where MyMagicHat would bleed the most?’ Vibha asked, breaking the silence.

  ‘Bugs!’ Moin said bitterly, before Nilay could answer. ‘They’ve been eavesdropping on our conversations for months. I’ve heard rumours of competitor teams whose sole purpose is to bleed other e-tailers. I don’t know if it’s true, but I believe they use high-end analytics for this purpose.’

  ‘I’m not so sure eavesdropping would yield such precise information, Moin,’ Nilay countered. ‘I wonder if they have somehow broken into our systems. That would give them far more reliable data. That would give precise information at a model level that they can use against us.’

  Moin fell silent. The thought that MyMagicHat’s systems could be compromised, Nilay knew, was a source of undiluted anguish to the other man.

  ‘Let me put myself in the shoes of an unscrupulous competitor,’ Vibha said, adjusting her glasses. ‘Suppose I’ve been bleeding MyMagicHat for two to three months. My listening devices now tell me that MyMagicHat has hit a cash crunch. I also know that they are about to close a deal to raise funds. What would I do next?’

  Moin was staring at her with his mouth open and a look of utter consternation on his face. A look that must have mirrored Nilay’s expression.

  ‘I would…try and sabotage the deal,’ Nilay whispered. ‘Having got MyMagicHat to the brink, I would push it over.’

  ‘Exactly!’ Vibha’s cherubic, child-like countenance seemed to harden. Her narrowed eyes now shone through her glasses. ‘And how would you sabotage the deal?’

  ‘One way…if I dared, that is…’ Nilay began, ‘would be to remove Puneet. Oh my God! No!’

  He heard Moin groan.

  Vibha continued softly, ‘Would someone stoop so low?’

  ‘Who knows, Vibha? If they can bug offices, why won’t they go a step further? Thousands of crores are at stake here…billions of dollars. People have sabotaged for less…killed for less…far less.’

  ■

  Two hours later, Moin was still at Nilay’s place. The two of them had compared over a hundred products across their website and their competitors’; a pattern had slowly emerged. They had found that competitor delivery times for many products were much longer than the ones MyMagicHat was offering. By entering a series of pin codes, they had also discovered that competition was not delivering these products in many towns and cities. Where the same product was not being delivered by competition, they checked equivalent products and found a similar pattern. Phone calls to Sundar had confirmed that these were the product categories where the unicorn was bleeding. Further analysis of the gap-funding payments over the past two months revealed that the sharp increase was entirely due to these products.

  By 11 p.m., they had found the reason for the cash crunch.

  ‘We may think it is sabotage, but they are doing nothing illegal,’ Nilay declared. ‘There is nothing unlawful about adjusting your product parameters to maximise your profit or a competitor’s loss. We have known all along that e-tailing is a game of attrition, where the ones with stamina and deep pockets outlast the others. This is just a new chapter in the continuing story.’

  ‘True,’ Moin agreed. ‘Our automatic price-matching program is not very different from what others launched earlier. Our algorithm does not take into account delivery time frames and availability across pin codes. Once they discovered that, they took advantage of it. We fell for it and paid the price.’

  ‘Now that we know better, I hope we can modify the algorithm to make it more sophisticated.’

  ‘You know, Nilay, I don’t blame them. This is all considered fair in our dog-eat-dog business. It’s like a chess game – they set a trap and we fell into it. Hopefully, we won’t repeat the mistake.’

  Nilay nodded and Moin continued.

  ‘But somehow, I still can’t link this up with Puneet’s disappearance. Playing with prices and delivery times is fair competition, but abducting or killing someone is criminal. I doubt if our competitors would stoop so low.’

  Nilay looked up quizzically.

  ‘And the bugs, Moin? Isn’t that criminal?’

  ‘Yes…but not of the same level as…’

  ‘Not as criminal as abducting or killing? One thing is more criminal and the other less so?’

  ‘That doesn’t seem to make sense, does it? But somehow, I can’t bring myself to think that our competitors will actually go out and kill someone. After all, they are people like us. We have so many people who had once worked with our competitors and they have people who had worked with us. Would we do something like kidnapping someone, Nilay?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Then how can we imagine them doing it? They are no d
ifferent from us at the personal level. It doesn’t fit, Nilay.’

  Nilay was at a loss to respond. At one level, Moin was right. The offices of their competitors were filled with people like him, Moin, Mervyn and Sundar. Many were his friends and classmates. None of them would go to the extent of killing someone to strike a competitor.

  But then, who else could have planted the bugs? There was no doubt that it was a premeditated and professional job.

  Speculating that some arm of the government was spying on them was far-fetched. Nothing MyMagicHat did had the faintest impact on national security. And with such accumulated losses, there was no question of tax evasion either. The only beneficiaries of spying were competitors. Besides, the timing and execution fit neatly.

  Nilay’s thoughts were interrupted by the ringing of a phone. Instinctively, he glanced at the clock. Who was calling at 11 p.m.? An instant later, he realized that it wasn’t his phone, but Moin’s that was ringing.

  ‘Hello?’

  Moin picked up the phone and walked away. Nilay brought his attention back to his laptop and immersed himself in his work. A few minutes later, he was startled by a tap on his shoulder and looked up. Moin stood there, looking down at him with an anguished expression. He knew at once that something terrible had happened.

  ‘What it is, Moin?’

  ‘That was Najeeb, a friend,’ Moin said, his voice cracking. ‘He works at an e-tailing firm…a smaller one. A marketing person in his company got a call from someone asking if he would be interested in confidential data from MyMagicHat.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘The caller claimed that someone he knows has genuine data from our systems.’

  ‘How do we know that this is true? The man could be a fraud.’

  ‘That’s exactly what Najeeb thought. So he called the person back and pretended that he was interested in the data. The man offered to send him a sample. A short while later, he received an email with a spreadsheet attached. The spreadsheet had fifty records from what looked – at first glance – like an e-tailer’s sales data. Najeeb says it looks genuine. Some of the records were from the last week of September – just two weeks old.’

  ‘Can you get him to send them to you?’

  ‘He already has.’

  Moin returned to his laptop and a minute later, they were staring at a spreadsheet. Galvanized, Moin’s fingers flew over the keyboard and another spreadsheet window opened.

  ‘I’ll compare this with our sales transactions,’ he explained in a hushed voice. ‘I downloaded that yesterday.’

  Two minutes later, the men were staring at two spreadsheet windows, arranged one below the other. In both of them, several rows were highlighted.

  The data in both windows was identical.

  Chapter 10

  ‘We must track down this guy,’ Gautam hissed the next morning.

  He, along with Nilay and Moin, were at his house early on a Sunday morning.

  ‘We must find out how he stole the data. We must find and seal the breach in our systems.’ His smouldering eyes flitted from Nilay to Moin. ‘Are you sure that the data he sent is genuine?’

  Moin nodded vigorously. He had checked it a dozen times; all fifty transactions had matched. It was beyond doubt.

  ‘Not only is it genuine,’ Nilay said grimly, ‘it’s also pretty fresh. Two of the transactions are just three weeks old. That means the theft took place sometime this very month.’

  ‘It could be even more recent,’ Moin added, ‘if there are more recent transactions in the data that he hasn’t yet shared with us.’

  ‘Precisely!’ Gautam thumped the table vigorously. ‘That is why we must get the entire data. We can then pinpoint when the theft took place. It must have happened very soon after the time stamp of the most recent transaction that the thief has.’

  ‘He claims to have lakhs of records. It stands to reason that he would have stolen as much data as he could when he broke in, including the most recent transactions. The more recent a transaction, the more valuable it would be.’

  ‘Which brings us back to what I was saying,’ Gautam thundered.

  Moin had never seen him so angry. The Gautam he knew was almost always polished and polite.

  ‘We must track this thief down! And we must do so without delay. Today, if possible.’

  An abrupt silence met the declaration. Moin was at a loss for words. How would they go about doing that? Wouldn’t it be dangerous? Out of habit, he looked at Nilay for guidance. Nilay always knew what to do – at college, at their previous workplace and now at MyMagicHat. Moin had always looked to him to point the way in uncertain situations.

  ‘You want to buy the data?’ he heard Nilay asking Gautam.

  ‘We show interest in acquiring the data and agree to buy it if the price is right. I am willing to pay for it if it helps nail the bastards.’ He paused for a moment and continued cautiously, ‘The only problem is that we can’t do it as MyMagicHat. We’ll have to pretend to be a competitor.’

  ‘Which means that none of us can be involved. We would be recognized.’

  ‘How about your friend, Moin? The guy who tipped you off.’

  ‘Najeeb?’ Moin’s heart lurched. ‘No, Gautam. He can’t. He’ll get into trouble!’

  ‘Through his company? I can speak to his CEO. We must – as an industry – kill this bane.’

  ‘Not his company. This is…dangerous stuff. If he helps us nail these guys, he will become a target. The crooks will come after him. The guys who steal data and do corporate espionage would have powerful backing…the backing of people Najeeb wouldn’t want to mess with.’

  ‘Hmm…’ Gautam nodded in understanding, much to Moin’s relief. ‘To what extent will he be willing to help?’

  ‘I think he will be willing to put us – me – in touch with the man who is selling the data,’ Moin said cautiously, unwilling to put his friend in danger. ‘I don’t think I can ask for more.’

  ‘Fair enough. Let him call the man and say that someone else is interested in the data and that he will be calling him. He can say that the caller will give his name as…um…Thomas.’

  ‘Thomas?’

  Gautam shrugged. ‘One false name is as good as another.’

  He leaned across to pick up an old mobile phone from the table and handed it to Moin. Moin stared at it with growing apprehension. It was an old Nokia model, one with a keypad. It had been ages since he had used such a phone. Why was Gautam giving it to him?

  ‘It has an untraceable SIM card,’ Gautam continued softly. ‘Don’t ask how I got it. Use it to speak to the data seller. He is, most likely, a go-between, a liaison –’

  ‘Me?’ Moin yelped. ‘You want me to speak to him?’

  Physical courage had never been Moin’s forte. As a sickly, anaemic child in a large, impoverished family that included two hulking elder brothers, he had always been smaller than the people around him. Only in the last stages of adolescence had he spurted up and gained inches, but that had left him looking scraggy and underweight for his height. He had seldom summoned up the courage to confront anyone physically. The one time he had, he had got roughed up. In fact, matters might have worsened had Nilay not intervened. The last few years of financial success in the corporate world had filled him out, but the timidity developed during his childhood had never left him.

  He would stay undaunted in the face of the knottiest of intellectual problems. He actually revelled in mental challenges – they were adrenalin to him. But physical ones were a different cup of tea. The thought of masquerading as a buyer of illegal wares and talking to crooks to corner them left him weak-kneed.

  ‘We’ll need to play along till we get to the actual thief, Moin,’ Gautam said. ‘I’m willing to pay some money to demonstrate our interest. We should ask for another five to ten thousand transactions so that we can be more certain of their authenticity.’

  Moin was still mute with shock when the doorbell rang and they heard Gautam’s housekeeper hur
rying to answer it.

  ‘That must be Inspector Dhruvi,’ Gautam continued. ‘I asked her to join us. While we can make the initial calls, we can’t track down the thieves. For that, we will need the police’s help.’

  ‘Can’t the police make the initial calls too?’ Moin squeaked, finally finding his voice.

  ‘They wouldn’t sound convincing and the police won’t be able to make out if the data is genuine or not. Nor would they know what exactly to say when they speak to him. One of us has to be involved, but Nilay and I have been on TV many times and our voices could be recognized. You are, therefore, best suited for this. Limit your involvement to speaking over the phone and verifying the data. Don’t meet the crooks. That way, you’ll remain anonymous.’

  A knock sounded on the door and Gautam opened it to usher in Dhruvi and a nondescript man she introduced as Alex. Moin found his attention riveted on Dhruvi.

  Her eyes – the colour of dark chocolate – and her simple but pleasant face aroused his interest; he found a strange spark of happiness in himself in the midst of multiple anxieties. He watched her bright eyes dance about in her darkish face as she spoke to Gautam. A minute later, the eyes turned to him and he began recounting the previous evening’s events for her.

  ‘What would you like us to do?’ Dhruvi asked Gautam, once she had heard Moin out.

  ‘Track down the data thieves, what else?’

  ‘The last time we met,’ she said slowly, looking into Gautam’s eyes, ‘you didn’t want to lodge a complaint. This incident seems to be something different. Are you willing to file a complaint this time?’

  ‘I’m not sure if it is a different matter, Inspector. Both are related in some way, aren’t they? For one, both relate to espionage at MyMagicHat. One is about stealing confidential conversations and the other about stealing confidential data.’

  ‘Does this affect your prospective deal with Kantoff Capital?’