MARKETING ESCAPADE landed a young employee of Indiabulls Securities Ltd in a trouble after he sent ‘damaging’ SMSs to Karvy customers to draw them into his firm’s fold.
“Karvy Closed! Wanna Be A Successful Investor? Change your D-Mat Account with Indiabulls,” was the SMS which not only upset Karvy Stock Broking Ltd customers, but also the bosses.
Karvy group’s top brass not only nabbed an employee of Indiabulls Securities Ltd but also made him apologise to the senior officials of both the companies at the regional headquarters on Tuesday.
The Indiabulls employee named Shariq who joined the company on May 5 this year wrote in his apology letter addressed to the manager of Karvy Stock Broking Ltd: “An idea crossed my mind that why not promote a business using the SMS service as other companies had been doing in the market. I got the mobile numbers of the Karvy Stock Broking customers from a friend who works for a credit card company and started sending SMSs to the Karvy Group clients.
I did not have any malafide intentions in sending these messages”.
When contacted, vice president of Karvy Stock Broking Ltd Nitin Saxena told HT Lucknow Live that an FIR had already been lodged against the employee of Indiabulls Securities. “Shariq had admitted to have sent only 4 to 5 SMSs to our clients. But we got complaints from even as far as Gorakhpur where Karvy Group has a trading terminal.”
{{/usCountry}}When contacted, vice president of Karvy Stock Broking Ltd Nitin Saxena told HT Lucknow Live that an FIR had already been lodged against the employee of Indiabulls Securities. “Shariq had admitted to have sent only 4 to 5 SMSs to our clients. But we got complaints from even as far as Gorakhpur where Karvy Group has a trading terminal.”
{{/usCountry}}This is the second incident in the city when on April 28 this year, some employees of Indiabulls Securities had barked into the Karvy Stock Broking office and were forcing the investors to shift their Demat accounts to Indiabulls Securities, he added.
Branch manager of Indiabulls Securities Ltd Anil Kumar Singh, when contacted said the SMS was sent by Shariq on his own and the company had nothing to do with the incident.
“We would take appropriate action against the employee for sending the misleading SMS messages to the Karvy’s clients,” he said.
“It’s ignorance on part of our employee,” Singh added.