In one such party Sundeep met Nitin. He was not aware then that this meeting would one day change his life.
54
The Chennai branch of New York International Bank had broken all records in personal loan sales in January 2003. Sundeep had gone down to Chennai to celebrate this success of Team Chennai. All the employees of Chennai along with the spouses of key employees were invited. The venue for the party was The Club, a happening joint on the outskirts of the city.
It was about 11.45 p.m. when Sundeep walked in. The party was just about coming alive. Sundeep was extremely tired. He had come after visiting all the ATMs of the bank in the city and had driven over 150 kilometres that day. His body was not willing, but he had pushed himself to attend this party since his presence would have motivated the entire team.
At quarter past midnight, in walked Nitin, the Chennai City Head for Personal Loans. Vivek Jalan, the personal loan head of NYB in India, introduced Nitin to Sundeep as the star of the personal loans team and the driving force behind Chennai achieving the desired numbers. Sundeep, the motivator that he was, showered praise on Nitin, who was quite flattered.
'Thank you, Sundeep.'
A young girl, who was standing quietly behind Nitin, listening to his conversation with Sundeep, came up and stood beside him.
'Oh, I am so sorry,' Nitin apologised for having forgotten something important. 'Sundeep, please meet my wife Karuna.'
She was ravishing. Gorgeous! Sundeep couldn't take his eyes off her. He continued to stare at her with his mouth open, as if in a trance. When it started becoming too obvious, Vivek nudged him knowing that Sundeep didn't realise that he was being noticed.
She was a pretty young thing, about twenty-five years of age and had got married to Nitin about six months ago. Karuna worked in the Branch Banking side of NYB.
'Hi Karuna. I must say you have a wonderful guy for a husband. He will go places. I am sure.'
'Thank you, sir. It's very kind of you.'
Vivek pulled Sundeep towards the bar to get a drink. On the way, he asked him, 'What are you up to, Sundeep?'
'Kya cheez hai yaaaaar!' Sundeep was clearly turned on by her.
'I don't find her too good looking,' Vivek contested, 'She is an eight on ten.'
'Vivek, I can read women better than you. I can tell from her looks, she will fuck well. She will be a ten on ten in bed. Wanna bet?' said Sundeep as they reached the bar.
'Every woman looks good at a particular age and she is at that age, Sundeep.'
Even while they were standing at the bar, Sundeep was constantly looking at her from the corner of his eyes. And even Karuna didn't miss this. Sundeep found her looking at him every time he glanced at her. She even managed to smile back at him a couple of times.
Sundeep called Nitin to the bar and said, 'Nitin, you have done us proud. You have done something that no one could have done. Beating Standard Chartered Bank in the Chennai market is something we had till now considered impossible. You need to do a bottoms up for this.' And he gave him a large glass of whisky and asked him to drink it on the rocks in one gulp. Nitin was too thrilled to refuse and did as he was asked.
Sundeep's trick was working. Now he called the entire Chennai sales team and asked them to do another round of bottoms up and, of course, Nitin was a part of the second round too.
In the next thirty minutes, Nitin had gulped down three bottoms up of whisky, two of vodka, and one beer. That he could stand straight despite that was the ninth wonder of the modern world. That he couldn't talk straight after three minutes was the wonder of mixing drinks.
By the end of the evening, Nitin was dead drunk. Karuna was worried about how she would cart Nitin home. That's when Sundeep offered to drop them home, an offer Karuna didn't refuse. Sundeep asked Vivek to go back to the hotel and wait for him.
Sundeep's cab zipped through the empty streets of Chennai at 3.00 a.m., with a drunk Nitin, who had completely passed out, belted up in the front seat. Sundeep and Karuna were in the back seat. Karuna looked stunning. Her t-shirt, wet with her sweat,clung to her breasts. He was reminded of her dancing to the wild beats earlier in the night. Every part of her body had been shaking invitingly.
She had even asked Sundeep for a dance, and when they had danced, they had set the floor on fire. Sundeep had held her tightly and close to him. So close that she had felt the movement in his crotch. She had come close to him and repeatedly rubbed against his erect manhood. Whether it was an intentional tease or a harmless dance, he couldn't tell. The sweat had made her shirt cling to her body and he could make out her contours in detail. She had a wonderful figure, a toned body. A sculpture guys would kill for.
'Have you ever learnt dancing? You dance very well.' Sundeep was trying to build a conversation with her. 'Not exactly. I am just a casual dancer. It's just that the number of parties one attends these days makes one a good dancer. You too are amazing on the floor.' Sundeep was thrilled by the compliment.
They reached Nitin and Karuna's house in ten minutes. 'Why don't you come up for a coffee,' Karuna offered and Sundeep was not a fool to refuse.
They both carried Nitin to their third floor apartment and tucked him into his bed. Karuna held Sundeep's hand and thanked him profusely. They sat down on the sofa in the living room and started talking. Karuna went to the kitchen and switched on the coffee machine. Then she excused herself, telling Sundeep that she would be back after a change of clothes as she was feeling very sweaty and sticky in her party wear.
She went into the bedroom and closed the door. Sundeep was very disappointed that the door was shut. Once inside, Karuna opened the bathroom door to go in to quickly wash her face. The suction on account of the bathroom door being opened slightly pulled in the main bedroom door. It opened slightly giving Sundeep a fair view of the bedroom. What Sundeep saw left him dumbstruck. Karuna walked out of the bathroom after a wash, with just a towel wrapped around her. The water dripping from the hair on her bare shoulder made her look divine. She had a fabulous body. Her assets were even better than what they seemed to Sundeep. Sundeep slowly walked up to the door. He didn't make any noise, but stood still at the door, watching her as she dropped the towel to pick up her clothes from the bed. Suddenly his mobile rang. Vivek was trying to reach him.
Karuna heard the ring. It was closer than she thought it to be. She looked up and was shocked to see Sundeep at the door, staring at her naked body. She screamed. 'Get away from here,' she screamed again. Sundeep quickly went back and sat down on the sofa. The bedroom door banged shut.
He sat there for a minute, then quietly got up and came out of the apartment and made his way back to the cab. 'Taj Connemara,' he told the cab driver and quietly came back to the hotel.
When Karuna saw that there was no one in the living room, she heaved a sigh of relief. She went to the kitchen, switched off the coffee machine and went to bed. She kept tossing in bed, feeling violated by Sundeep. However she decided not to tell Nitin, in the interest of his career.
55
It was three months since Sundeep had moved in. Sundeep was systematically going about creating his own empire. His equation with Swami was just about at the razor's edge. If it had not deteriorated, it was because of Swami's sanity and balance and definitely not Sundeep's.
That was the time when banks in India started selling insurance products. Banks were required by law to tie up with only one insurance agency. They were forbidden from entering into multiple tie-ups. NYB had tied up with KAIC.
The relationship manager from KAIC Insurance Company handling the New York International Bank relationship was a lady named Sharada Rajan. Sharada was a very efficient young woman who had risen to success in a short period of time. Firstly, she was one of the few experienced personnel in the insurance industry, and, secondly, she knew how to use her charms to get her work done. She got along gloriously with Sundeep Srivastava. Had to, since she was a good-looking woman and high on intellect too.
When New York Intern
ational Bank started selling insurance policies to its customers, in no time the bank emerged as the single largest contributor to the insurance premium collected by KAIC.
Of all the bank assurance partners of KAIC, only NYB was meeting its insurance sales numbers. Nobody else was even close to getting there. Sharada was not happy. If she had to meet her annual targets, Sundeep had to do something special. He was her only hope.
She kept pushing Sundeep to help sell more insurance. Sundeep didn't know what to do. He was running out of ideas. He pushed all his channels, launched contests and incentives, looked the other way when insurance was wrongly sold. In short, did whatever he could. But the market had hit a plateau. The incentive that Sharada had offered him was also something special.
Sharada had promised him a 'full service' date, after they reach number one position in the banking industry. 'Sundeep, the day you become number one in the industry, I'll be all yours. Just you and me will go on a date to Switzerland. It will be no business and all pleasure,' she had teasingly said, running her fingertips over Sundeep's trousers. When it came to women, Sundeep just couldn't control himself.
Then he had his first run-in with Swami.
56
Amit Suri, the cards head, had gone on leave and Swami was temporarily in charge of credit cards as well. Sundeep pushed Akshay Bhalla to bundle insurance with home loans. He did the same with Vivek for personal loans. Both of them agreed and cross-selling of insurance was launched.
But that was not enough. NYB was one of the largest banks in terms of credit cards in circulation. It had over one-and-a-half million cards in circulation in 2004. When Sundeep didn't get enough joy bundling insurance with home loans and personal loans, he came up with an idea: why not sell insurance to cards customers! On the face of it, this was a normal idea that could be executed very easily.
However, there was one difference. Till date all cross-sell programmes to credit cards customers, or, for that matter, any cross-selling programme, would require the customer to come back and ask for the product being sold. Any normal offer going to a customer through a direct mail campaign would detail the features on offer and give a call-in number or mail-in address for the customer to order the product or service. The response percentage in such cases was around four to five percent. But this percentage of the cards base was not going to get Sundeep anywhere.
In the steering committee meeting held to discuss the cross-selling of insurance products to credit cards customers, Sundeep's devious mind came up with a different idea. Sharada had been thrilled when Sundeep had mentioned this to her.
Sundeep recommended that instead of asking for positive confirmation from customers, why not ask for a negative confirmation. He implied that the best way to do the deal was to send out a mailer to all customers that New York International Bank was offering a KAIC insurance to all cardholders and that the premium amount would automatically be debited from their credit cards. Customers were to be given an option of calling back and confirming only if they didn't want insurance. In case customers do not confirm back, they would start getting charged for insurance premium, month on month.
Sundeep was counting on the fact that many customers do not read mailers and many of them would not make the effort of picking up the phone and calling NYB. In case they did, he would happily reverse the premium charged and claim a refund from KAIC. He was counting on the inertia of people to make this programme a success.
Swami was taken aback when Sundeep recommended this. 'Sundeep, this is not right. We will be hauled over coal for doing something like this. Customers will lose faith in us.'
'But we are on the right side of the law, Swami,' argued Sundeep.
'But, only in the letter of it. I do not think this is in the right spirit,' Swami insisted.
'Swami, look at the revenues we will be earning. 1.5 million customers, at one hundred rupees per month, works out to forty million dollars a year in premium collections. Even if we get twenty percent of that from the insurance company, we will make a clean profit of eight million dollars. We have no other way of beating Citibank and coming on top. We cannot go wrong on this.' Sharada would have loved this argument.
'Sundeep, we do not need to beat Citibank in this fashion. And, surely, to beat us, they wouldn't do anything like what you are proposing. We might even get into trouble with the regulators and the consumer forums. Needless to say, our name will be hauled over coal.'
Vivek Jalan and Mohit Bakshi agreed with Swami. But Sundeep bulldozed them into accepting his stance. Swami was not convinced. He refused to toe this line, stating that this was morally incorrect.
Finally, after a heated debate, Sundeep said, 'Swami, I appreciate your views, but I am going ahead and doing this. You may choose to either be a party to this or stay out of it.'
'I will not be a party to this,' retorted an angry Swami and stomped out of the room. He couldn't believe that this was the same Sundeep with whom he had set up the retail business over a decade ago.
Once he got back to his desk, he shot off a mail to Kailash about this deal and his staying out of it. But he got an Out of Office response from Kailash's mailbox. Kailash was away on vacation and wouldn't be back for another two weeks. Sundeep was in charge. Despite wanting to do something, he couldn't.
Sundeep looked at Bakshi and asked him to move fast on the insurance cross-sell programme. Within the next two weeks the mailer was out. This was the first negative confirmation cross-sell of its kind in India. New York International Bank sold a million insurance policies to its cardholders, half of who didn't even know that they were paying for an insurance premium.
Sundeep had pulled off the biggest rip-off in the history of Indian credit cards. One million insurance policies sold with a monthly premium collection of close to three million dollars was not small game.
It was not long before the press and consumer activists got wind of it. New York International Bank's press office was flooded with complaints and calls seeking details of this scheme.
'NYB fleeces millions of unsuspecting Indians,' soon screamed the headlines in the Times of India. 'The great credit card rip off; 'Insure against insurance frauds: Banks on the prowl'; 'Mis-selling, the NYB way'—nearly every newspaper published ugly articles about New York International Bank.
Sundeep was not flustered. He knew that all of this would die down. When Kailash called him about this, Sundeep requested him to give him a week. Kailash was worried that if the international media got to know about this, NYB would be screwed. It might even cost him his job. The only saving grace for him was that this entire programme was commissioned and executed when he was on leave.
Sundeep had already got his press machinery into an overdrive. The media relations wing of NYB called up all newspapers, magazines and tabloids, and threatened withdrawal of advertising support if they wrote anything derogatory. This worked on the smaller media and TV channels.
The larger ones took it upon themselves to wage a crusade against the tyranny of the MNC banks. They kept writing about New York International Bank for four-five days and then lost steam. It was no longer front-page news. The entire episode fizzled out. New York International Bank earned over five million dollars in the bargain.
This episode took place in the month of November. In India, NYB was well behind the targeted revenues for the year. So, the five million dollars they made in the entire bargain, despite the debatable means employed, didn't create any internal stir. On the contrary, Sundeep became a hero. 'Everyone told me not to do it, particularly you Swami. Despite that I went ahead and did the insurance deal. Now look. The bank has earned over five million dollars. You must take risks in business,' Sundeep thundered in one of his many speeches. He started touting the scheme as an innovation. This irritated Swami no end, but the nice Swami never responded to such provocations.
Sharada, true to her word, went on a 'full service' date with Sundeep. But, instead of Switzerland, they decided to make do with Sharada's posh home i
n Pali Hill, Bandra. Sundeep got his pound of flesh, literally, for his indiscretion.
57
Swami's open dissent on the insurance sales issue had majorly pissed off Sundeep. He was quite furious. But this issue was so sensitive that he didn't want to be seen taking a tough stance on Swami. He decided to wait for the right opportunity to get even.
A golden opportunity came his way.
The BPO wave was sweeping India. A number of companies from the west started outsourcing their back office processing jobs to India. Call centres across the world were relocating to India. India offered a splendid opportunity to cut costs. It also had a large population of English-speaking people, and so finding skilled people to do these jobs was not difficult.
NYB also wanted to shift some processes to India from across the globe. They decided to scout around and acquire a BPO in India. They would rather outsource to a company managed by themselves rather than to a third party.
Within ninety days a target BPO was identified and acquired. BOCA was a small BPO based in Delhi. Post acquisition by NYB, the responsibility for running it and getting cost efficiencies out of it was thrust on the retail side of NYB. Sundeep was asked to take it under his fold. Grudgingly, he accepted this. He viewed it as a pain rather than a challenge.
All the employees of BOCA were absorbed by the NYB group. Within two weeks of the BOCA acquisition, its leadership team was asked to make a presentation to Sundeep on the opportunities that existed in the BPO space, and how a bank like NYB could leverage on this acquisition.
Sundeep was not interested in the proceedings right from the beginning. The presentation took him through some slides on the evolution of the BPO industry in India and the nuances of operating a BPO.
If God Was A Banker Page 14