Aliens Developers Pvt. Ltd. return our money

Facts:

Total Amount paid to Aliens till date - Rs 25 lakhs plus

Booked the flat in-  Nov-06

Promised Date of Delivery -  3 years i.e November 2009

Delay as on Feb 2012 - 2 years 4 months

Discussion for cancellation of flat initiated in - Apr-11

Formal letter to cancel booking given in-  Jun 2011( 2 months delay was due to Aliens not giving the resale/booking cancellation form on time. We sent back the form in two days)

According to the sale agreement, our money should have been returned in - 45days

No. of mails (only reminder mails) that we have sent to get our money back - 17
No. of times that we have visited their office to get our money back - 11

No. of phone calls that we have made to them to get our money back - lost count

No. of days that we had to wait to get to speak (only speak, NOT meet) to the Managing Director, Mr. Hari Challa - More than 2 months

All this inspite of both of us having very demanding jobs. We are not even accounting for the man hours lost, lost time with our daughter, and the emotional and mental stress that we are experiencing in the entire process.


They have given us 5 post dated cheques starting from May 2012 onwards to repay MY money. Reason: They needed to pay to HUDA. Using our money to pay to HUDA? Is that how companies work? I have spent 12 years analyzing companies and financial markets. These are tell tale signs!

This happened in November 2011 (8 months after the initiation of the talks). But we need our money urgently. So we requested to speak to Hari Challa. It took 2 months to get to speak to him.

Hari Challa offered to pay the rent of the house we are living in currently, or to pay us interest when we finally got to speak to him after chasing for more than 2 months. But all we are asking for is to repay our principal. That’s All. Not a penny more. Not a penny less. He promised to pay us Rs2lakhs per month till the month of May, and from then onwards the previously given post dated cheques would be honoured.

Forget about the interest that we would have earned on the Rs25lakhs over the years, even if they had returned our money within 45days of the letter of cancellation of booking, at the going Fixed Deposit rates, we would have earned an interest of Rs1.8lakhs till date. And as per the contract, for delay (leaving the grace period of 6 months), they should have paid us Rs3/-(much lower than the industry standards) per SFT per month, amounting to close to Rs1.2lakhs. But we are not asking for all this. We are just asking for our principal.

To get the Rs 2lakhs per month agreed y Hari Challa, we have made numerous phone calls, 2 visits to their office, written emails. We could get a DD of Rs 2 lakhs at the end of all this. But they have refused to give post dated cheques for the rest of the months. For the balance cheques, they made several commitments, every time it was TOMORROW. Broke each of their commitments.

If the MANAGING DIRECTOR’S word cannot be trusted, what kind of company is this? What kind of people work in this organization? Do we need to call them, visit them, and email to them these many times each month to get our own money back?

And Mr. Hari Challa wants to build a WORLD CLASS company. Indeed. He should be ashamed to even utter those words. With cronies of the likes of Suresh working for him, its not far before he is dragged to court by some disgruntled customer.

As Naseeruddin Shah says in the movie A Wednesday, its not that we can’t do things to hurt them (i.e take them to court or send goons or publisize what they are doing), its just that we are so caught up in our day to day work, that we do not have the time or the energy to do it. But there is a limit to tolerance. While people like us cannot resort to goons, we can surely take advantage of technology.

So as a first step, we are posting this on my Blog.

In the second step, it will go to the mailing list of our respective companies’ employees and contacts.

In the third step, we will post this on facebook, orkut and twitter. Including on the facebook account of Hari Challa. Let his friends also read about his world class company and him.

In the fourth step, we take this to the media.

Fifth and final step, gandhigiri. We will stand with placards in front of their office to get our money back.

It is sad that we even have to think of all this. We would glad just take our money and have nothing to do with Aliens ever. But they are forcing us to resort to all this. We are educated and busy people. We are ashamed that we have had to deal with people like Suresh who cannot even be called human, to say the least.

It is our earnest request to all the potential home buyers to not even consider any of the properties of Aliens.

Funding for agri-biz sector

This article was published in Hindu BusinessLine on February 6th, 2012
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/industry-and-economy/taxation-and-accounts/article2863213.ece

Think venture capital and private equity funding and IT, Telecom and Bio-Technology industries crop into our heads, followed by humongous returns like 10,500 and 1,692 times the initial investment in the case of Body Shop and Apple Computers. In the year 2011, the PE and VC deals in India totalled close to $11.26 billion, up about 25 per cent from that of 2010

(www.ventureintelligence.in; investments in real estate excluded). In spite of the turmoil in the financial markets, the inflow of PE and VC funds have seen a decent increase during the last year. Most of the investments have gone to the IT and ITES and BFSI sectors.

However, a miniscule amount has also made its way into the agri-business domain. There were 11 deals, totalling $116.8 million in 2010 and 10 deals worth $89.16 million in 2011 for agri-related businesses, a decline of approximately 24 per cent.


WHY INVEST

Given that agriculture is far from the kind of characteristics that a funding agency looks for in a business, viz, new, upcoming, at least 300-400 per cent returns, the above statistics is not surprising. However, knowing that agriculture is seeing a genuine revival in India, with many business houses getting into agri and related businesses on a big scale, the need for funds in this sector cannot be denied.

Agriculture contributes about 20 per cent to the nation's GDP and accounts for 50 per cent of the workforce. But, what is it that will attract the PE and VC funds to this sector? First, demand for agri commodities is increasing and will continue to increase as the world at large becomes more conscious about food for all.

Secondly, the need to innovate in this sector becomes more important as less and less land is available for agriculture with each passing day. Thirdly, an agri business does not mean farming alone. It includes investment across the value chain starting right from the agri inputs, agri output, agri produce distribution and agri services including finance in several sub-sectors within the agri business such as agriculture, horticulture, dairy, fisheries, poultry and meat etc. So within the gamut of agri businesses, there is a lot of scope.

Fourth, entry of large business houses in this sector offers more organisation and structure to the sector and scope for collaborations and consolidations.

WHY STAY AWAY

Howard Van Auken and Clyde Kenneth Walter of Iowa State University in their paper, “Facilitating the Flow of Capital to Niche Agricultural Producers in Rural Markets” published in Small Business Institute Journal in the year 2010, rightly point out that “Availability of capital has historically been a challenge in rural markets.

Niche agricultural producers face a daunting task when trying to raise capital because they commonly have business models that are not well understood by providers of capital and, thus, they are considered high risk”.
It is true that most of the PE and VC funds by virtue of having been promoted by Silicon Valley protagonists, understand computer software, hardware and bio-technology, but may not understand agriculture or related businesses. They may be experts at knowing about bugs and viruses, implementation issues, but may be totally unaware about the quality of soil or the pesticides needed to control certain pests.

Also, the gestation period may be pretty high for agri-businesses with cyclicality built in. In comparison to knowledge based businesses, agri-businesses are not only difficult to scale up, but also time consuming. This is against the PE and VC funds characteristics which typically look to exit in 5-6 years.

Barring a few bigger players, agriculture primarily comprises of relatively unaware farmers, who might look at the entire process of obtaining funding as a hassle. Similarly, capital providers might perceive them to be too risky because of the size and unorganised nature of their operations.

Another major hurdle is that, the VC and PE firms generally look at larger ticket sizes. To elaborate, in the past 10 years, there have been 3,667 non-agri PE and VC deals in India, with an average size of $17.28 million each. Compare this with 62 deals in the agriculture domain with an average deal size of $11.14 million each, over the last ten-year period.

What Now

The market is definitely responding to the needs of the sector with dedicated funds like India agri business fund by Rabo bank and Omnivore Capital by Godrej Agrovet coming up. The key is to build in or include the social benefit/impact angle when doing the project evaluation. Also, a lot needs to be done to educate, organise and assist the capital-seekers so that they can benefit from such funds. Here, regulators will need to take a lead. Unless they help the sector organise and seek co-financing, it would be very difficult for the VC and PE providers to finance every single capital seeker individually.