We about 5 of us together started a company to develop a software product back in 1999. It was very difficult to hire a person for development then because everybody was trying to go to US by body shopping companies. We managed to get people to develop the software product ground up and start going by investing our own money.
During the initial planning stages we knew tat VC%u2019s are going to invest. Unfortunately during the tech bust in 2000 VC%u2019s pulled back. One VC came forwarded and put 1/3rd of the total money invested by all of US. He took 40% of the company. There was no choice. If we do not do it the company had to be closed. We invested all our saving we had after working in US for few years. We had no more our money to invest,
The company did not have money and went bankrupt in 2002. In the mean time we approached several big Indian tech companies to show the product we developed and none of them wanted to look at it because they said we are not into product development (Even now they are not doing anything).
Since we had no money left we came back to US. And then the unimaginable thing happens in 2004. The VC%u2019s who has political connections (we came to know after the fact & case) puts a criminal case in the court. Saying we cheated them of money. Here is the few things they did.
Send registered letters in our name to wrong address and produced to show that we are absconding. Claimed that we started the company to defraud them. (Remember they put X and we put 3X) Filed the case with Magistrate court with section IPC 20 (This means, judge will not read the case but accept it and send it to police to investigate).
Then the police started harassing us. It has been 2 years we are getting harassed and we do not know when this is going to end.
I am sure we will be exonerated form this. But we never thought we will go through this ordeal we are going through for starting a company, giving employment to people, having our own product.
Even though the company failed ( If you look at statistic only 98% startup go bankrupt in US. In India risk is much more and risk increases if it is a product company.) at least I learned some new things. That is about the judicial law in India
With few thousand rupees you can sue and make somebody%u2019s life miserable. It is unbelievable. Sometime I wonder is there law? Frame us by sending a registered letter to wrong address and saying he is absconding with money? Court is accepting the case for stealing X amount of money while we invested 3X. (Every year we filed tax with the authorities and we have document.) This is unbelievable guys.
I am posting this because I see interesting comments on this post. Since the case is still going on I can not give the web link for the company or the case number
Good luck to you guys..
PS: When you try to do something you always learn something new. In our case it happened to be Law and Police in INDIA which was really was an unexpected area!!.
