by RV Raman
‘At that time, nobody. I informed Shivakumar of the cyber cell only around 2 p.m. By then, our people had begun tracking Nitya down.’
‘Did anyone at Tau Squared know about Nefertiti? Any of the employees?’
‘No, ma’am.’
‘Did the cyber cell guys ask about Nefertiti when they were at Tau Squared? Did they question the management or the employees about her?’
‘No.’ Alex’s response was immediate, certain. ‘The cyber cell guys had instructions not to disclose any findings.’
‘Then nobody, apart from you, knew about Nitya alias Nefertiti?’
‘Except the cyber cell Inspector.’
‘He doesn’t count – it was already around 2 p.m. by the time he came to know.’ Dhruvi drew in a deep breath and continued softly. ‘Alex, Nitya received the call at 11.15 a.m., asking her to attend a meeting. I am assuming that she was abducted under the pretext of a meeting. So the information about Nitya alias Nefertiti must have reached the abductor by 11 a.m. or so, latest.’
‘I’m positive the leak was not from Tau Squared or the cyber cell, ma’am.’
‘So it seems. Where, then, did the leak take place? There is only one possibility, Alex.’
‘MyMagicHat?’
‘That’s right. At MyMagicHat, only two people knew about it – Gautam and Nilay. Do you know what their movements were?’
‘Give me ten minutes, ma’am. I’ll call you.’
Seven minutes later, Alex called back.
‘I just checked with our people at MyMagicHat,’ he said. ‘Nilay was with you till almost 1 p.m. You had both returned to the guest house after your discussion with Gautam.’
‘That’s right. What about Gautam?’
‘He left office immediately after your meeting.’
‘Get hold of his mobile’s call and SMS records, Alex. We must check this out immediately. Get Nilay’s phone records too.’
‘I will, but there is no real need, ma’am.’
‘Why not?’
‘At 11.15 a.m., when Nitya was called for a meeting, only three people knew about her – Gautam, Nilay and you. Nilay is in the clear, as he was with you till 1 p.m. That leaves only Gautam.’
‘You’re forgetting something, Alex.’
‘What, ma’am?’
‘The bugs. There may still be listening devices at MyMagicHat.’
Chapter 23
‘Hi, Mervyn,’ Nilay said into his mobile phone. ‘Sorry to bug you on a Sunday morning. Do you have a few minutes to talk?’
‘As long as you don’t want me to come somewhere to meet you.’ Mervyn’s tone was not particularly warm.
‘No, no,’ Nilay laughed awkwardly. ‘Just over the phone. If you’re busy, I can call later.’
‘I can talk, if it’s not for long. I’m baking a cake. It’ll be done in four minutes.’
‘Four minutes, then. Mervyn, your guys had done a full review of our major sellers last month, right?’
‘Yeah. The top 100.’
‘During the review, you had gathered information on their supply points and logistics arrangements, hadn’t you?’
‘That’s right. At least, their major warehouses and logistics partners.’
‘Most of our sellers are traders, right? I mean, they basically source products from the manufacturers and supply them to customers.’
‘Yes. They have arrangements with product distributors and, sometimes, the product manufacturers themselves, which enable them to supply goods quickly and cost-effectively.’
‘The sellers themselves don’t hold much stock, do they? That would require higher working capital.’
‘It depends. Large sellers often have their own warehouses. What you say about working capital is true for the smaller sellers. But they too hold some stock of low value, less bulky products like books and fast-moving mobile phones – at least, a few pieces.’
‘What about larger, high-value products like TVs and fridges?’
‘It doesn’t make sense for anyone to hold much stock of TVs and fridges – why pile up inventory at different points of the supply chain? They have back-to-back arrangements with distributors or manufacturers to supply the product as and when an order is placed.’
Nilay had known all of this, but had deliberately begun the discussion in this way so that he could take the focus away from his real question, which he was now about to ask.
‘Got it, Mervyn,’ he said. ‘Have you documented the details of the top 100’s logistics and warehouse arrangements somewhere?’
‘Of course. It’s on the intranet. At the bottom of the seller page, you’ll find a link saying “Supply Chain”. Click on that and you’ll get to the details we spoke about. It has warehouse locations, logistics partnerships, historical shipment times and so on.’
‘Thanks, Mervyn. Enjoy your cake.’
As soon as Nilay had hung up, he went to the seller page of SM Retail and clicked through to the page with their supply chain details. They had nine warehouses across the country, the addresses of which were provided, in addition to Google Maps snapshots of their locations. The warehouse at Bengaluru was in Whitefield.
He then scanned their customer ratings, shipment times and other performance parameters. They were among the best in MyMagicHat. Finally, he looked at their logistics partnership and found that they had a comprehensive arrangement with Riptide Logistics. Riptide, he knew, was the Puraria Group’s Third Party Logistics venture.
Nilay then brought up the supply chain details of Supreme Electronics and studied them. They too had excellent performance parameters and customer satisfaction scores. They had seven warehouses across the country and their Bengaluru warehouse was in Whitefield. Their logistics partner too was Riptide.
Next came New Horizon Traders, another of the 37 sellers. They seemed to operate largely in the south and west of the country and had three warehouses, with the Bengaluru one at Whitefield.
Nilay blinked in surprise. All three had warehouses in Whitefield? He looked at the address of the warehouse. It seemed familiar. He copied it down on a notepad and scrolled down to see if they too had a logistics partnership.
They did. And it was with Riptide Logistics.
Nilay went back to the pages of SM Retail and Supreme Electronics to look at the addresses of their Whitefield warehouses.
They were identical to what he had written down on his notepad.
Three different sellers had their warehouse in exactly the same place. What did that mean? Was it a third party warehouse that all three happened to use? The answer came to him in a flash and he felt foolish.
Of course! All three were using Riptide Logistics. If they had outsourced their entire logistics to Riptide, their stocks would, in all likelihood, be held by Riptide. Then the Whitefield warehouses were, most likely, Riptide’s.
Over the next hour, Nilay scrutinized the logistics details of the rest of the 37 sellers. Six more of them used the same Whitefield warehouse. In fact, all those who had a warehouse in Bengaluru shared the same address. He also found that several of the 37 seemed to share warehouses in other places too – near Mewat outside Delhi, Thane near Mumbai, Sriperumbudur outside Chennai, among others.
Nilay then went back to each of the 37 sellers and looked at their company profiles. An hour later, he was none the wiser. The companies had been promoted by different people and registered in different cities. He recognized a few names, but most of them were unfamiliar to him.
Nilay sat back and summarized his findings for Vibha.
‘There’s nothing unusual in this,’ he concluded. ‘There’s nothing wrong if the sellers use the services of Riptide Logistics. MyMagicHat is only a marketplace, a facilitator who brings together sellers and buyers. As long as the dealings with Riptide are at “arm’s length” and the pricing is transparent, it is completely acceptable.’
‘So,’ Vibha said, ‘we’ve discovered nothing illegal or unethical?’
‘Nope.’
&nbs
p; ‘Not even when all the 37 sellers use Riptide?’
‘No, Vibha. We encourage sellers to use Riptide –’
‘Encourage or arm-twist?’
‘Depends on your point of view. There are major advantages for sellers if they use Riptide. First, they don’t have to pay Riptide; MyMagicHat does that directly after the transactions are reconciled. That means less working capital for the seller and less record-keeping.
‘But more importantly, Riptide’s systems are linked to MyMagicHat’s. That makes it possible to track every step of the logistics chain. Both customers and sellers are happier and so are we. Everyone knows the status of each order at all times and where exactly the shipment has reached.’
‘Rather convenient, isn’t it?’ Vibha was still unconvinced.
‘It’s by deliberate design, Vibha.’
‘How so?’
‘Go back to why Sashikant Puraria set up MyMagicHat. The Puraria Group was already big in distribution and retail. They had close to 200 stores and owned some of the largest distributorships and dealerships in the country – appliances, electronics, luggage, fashion accessories, baby care, cosmetics – you name it. They also had their own logistics and warehouses.
‘So when e-commerce became a big deal, they decided to jump on the bandwagon, because they already enjoyed very significant advantages in the form of brick-and-mortar retailing and distribution businesses. They already had what Flipkart, Amazon and Snapdeal were building. All they needed was a front layer that would enable them to sell on the Internet. That layer was MyMagicHat. Naturally, they pushed their own logistics and distributorships too.
‘Now, as a doyen of the retail industry, Sashikant has an extremely good handle on which way the wind blows. He foresaw the regulation that came in April this year, the one that limits how much any single entity can sell through an e-tailer.’
‘The regulation that restricts a single seller to holding no more than 25 per cent share of an e-tailer?’ Vibha asked. ‘That one?’
‘Yes. If you remember, WS Retail was dominant at Flipkart and Cloudtail had a huge share of Amazon. The same way, Unique Enterprises was utterly dominant at MyMagicHat. But sensing that the regulation was about to be introduced, Sashikant had a number of “independent resellers” – IRs, as we call them – set up. The Purarias made no investment in them so that there were no ownership linkages between MyMagicHat and the IRs. Nor did any other shareholder of MyMagicHat invest in them. The IRs were set up by people loyal to Sashikant.
‘Gautam then moved large chunks of business from Unique Enterprises to these IRs who, by the way, source products largely from Puraria Retail’s distributorships. So Puraria Retail continues to enjoy an overwhelming share of what gets sold through MyMagicHat, even though no single seller accounts for more than 25 per cent share.
‘Of course, other sellers were very welcome on MyMagicHat, but they were encouraged to use as much of the Puraria Group’s infrastructure as possible. A win-win arrangement. Absolutely nothing wrong with it.’
‘Okay, I buy your point. Then are we back to square one?’
‘We never left square one,’ Nilay grinned. ‘But seriously, there is something amiss. I’ve just not been able to put my finger on it.’
‘Maybe,’ Vibha suggested, scratching her nose, ‘we need to enquire into the 37 sellers a little more.’
‘In what way?’ Nilay asked.
‘Where do they source their products from? From the Puraria Group’s distributors or from elsewhere?’
‘A combination, I would expect, with a significant skew in favour of the former. I’ll try and find out tomorrow. But how will that help us?’
‘Something tells me that they are the IRs Sashikant had set up. They probably source all their products from the Puraria Group.’
‘Hmm…you’re probably right. I’ll check it out tomorrow. Discreetly.’
Vibha suddenly sat up with an intense look on her face.
‘Let’s do one final analysis, Nilay,’ she suggested. ‘I have the number of orders each of these 37 sellers have on the stolen data file. Why don’t we compare them with the number of orders each of them have on MyMagicHat’s systems?’
‘Good idea!’
A couple of minutes later, Nilay began reading out from his laptop screen.
‘New Horizon Traders had 59,232 orders in September. How many orders do they have in the stolen data file?’
‘59,232,’ Vibha said calmly. ‘Exactly the same. Check Supreme Electronics.’
‘91,004. What do you have?’
‘Ditto – 91,004. MS Retail? I have 1,81,443.’
A minute later, Nilay whispered, ‘Exactly the same here. Let’s check the others.’
Twenty minutes later, they had established that the number of orders each of the 37 sellers had on the stolen data file matched the number they had in MyMagicHat’s systems.
‘At last we have found the pattern we had been searching for!’ Vibha said, grinning tiredly at a pleased Nilay. ‘The stolen data file contains nothing but the list of orders placed with these 37 sellers in September. In other words, somebody has extracted all the September orders relating to these 37 sellers and only to these 37 sellers. But why? What does it mean? Why was this file generated? By whom? We have to find out.’
Nilay closed his laptop and rose. ‘There’s something strange about this that’s eluding us –’
The ringing of his phone made him stop short. It was Mervyn. Surprised and unsure as to why he was calling, Nilay let the phone ring a number of times before picking it up. Mervyn seldom called and if he was taking the trouble to call Nilay on a Sunday, it had to be for something out of the ordinary. Had the earlier conversation between them bothered Mervyn in some way?
‘Hi, Mervyn,’ Nilay said, making an effort to keep the surprise and apprehension out of his voice. ‘How did the cake turn out?’ He winked at Vibha.
‘Not bad,’ Mervyn rumbled. ‘Not bad at all. Say, I was wondering about our morning’s conversation. Did you find what you were looking for?’
‘Yes, some of it. You guys have done a good job.’
‘Anything specific you were looking for?’ There was a hint of suspicion in Mervyn’s voice.
‘Just what I told you – I wanted to understand where they stock products and supply them.’
‘Any specific seller?’
‘Not really. I was looking at our top 100.’
‘Okay.’ A note of uncertainty had crept into Mervyn’s voice. ‘I was talking to Gautam and he too wondered what you wanted the information for.’
So Mervyn had promptly informed Gautam that Nilay was poking around. Why? Being one the oldest hands at MyMagicHat, he had the habit of reporting every little thing about the others to Gautam. And the latter, Nilay knew, did nothing to discourage it. Was it just this old habit of reporting everything to the promoter or was it something else?
‘It’s just as I had told you,’ Nilay said. ‘I wanted to understand the seller supply chains. Oh, by the way, you were in Puraria Retail before coming to MyMagicHat, weren’t you?’
Puraria Retail Limited or PRL was the company that ran the group’s brick-and-mortar retailing business comprising 176 retail stores, as well as their dealer and distribution business.
‘That’s right.’
‘Do you remember if they have a warehouse in Bengaluru?’
‘Yes, of course. Bengaluru is a big market. They have a Class 1 warehouse here.’
‘Would you know where it is?’ Nilay was fishing.
‘Whitefield. They have some 100 acres, where they’ve built massive warehouses. Why do you ask?’
‘I was wondering if the Riptide Logistics warehouse is close to PRL’s.’
‘They are one and the same. They share the same building, but their storage areas are demarcated.’
Nilay spoke to Mervyn for another minute and hung up, a worried look on his face.
‘Gautam and Mervyn seem to have taken an unusual interest i
n my poking around,’ he said. ‘Enough interest for Mervyn to call back to snoop. I don’t like this, Vibha.’
‘We must be careful,’ Vibha said in an undertone, almost as if she feared that someone would overhear her. ‘There’s something rotten within MyMagicHat and it’s best if people don’t get to know of our investigations.’ A thought struck her and her face blanched. ‘Did he mention anything about my logging in?’
‘No. You didn’t log into MyMagicHat.’
Vibha nodded absent-mindedly. ‘Still…Nilay, we need an insurance policy of sorts.’
‘Insurance policy? What do you mean?’
‘Moin held sensitive information, which prompted someone to kill him. By the same token, if we hold sensitive information, our lives too could be in danger.’
‘Okay. So?’
‘How do we insure ourselves against this risk?’
‘I don’t follow you,’ Nilay said, puzzled.
‘Ideally, we should try and see that nobody gets to know about our investigation. But in the event that they do, we must ensure that we don’t keep sensitive information to ourselves. As long as we are the sole holders of such information, we’ll be singled out as targets. There will be a motive to silence us.’
‘You suspect Mervyn? Or Gautam?’ Nilay whispered.
‘We don’t know enough yet to suspect anyone. Moin too must have known something, but not enough to suspect anyone in particular. He was silenced before his suspicions could point him towards someone specific. We should be careful not to make the same mistake.’
It finally dawned on Nilay what his wife was driving at. With the understanding came a sobering apprehension.
‘You’re right,’ he said slowly. ‘We should share our findings with someone so that we’re not the sole holders of sensitive information. But with whom? We don’t know who is guilty and who isn’t. If we confide in the culprit, our goose will be cooked.’
‘There’s only one person we can trust,’ Vibha whispered. ‘The police Inspector. Call her.’
Nilay stared at her for a long moment, then reached for his mobile, completely unaware that the phone had been bugged.
Someone, somewhere had already overheard every word he and Vibha had exchanged.