S RISHTI P UBLISHERS & D ISTRIBUTORS
Registered Office : N-16, C.R. Park
New Delhi 110 019
Corporate Office : 212A, Peacock Lane
Shahpur Jat, New Delhi 110 049
First published by
Srishti Publishers & Distributors in 2015
Copyright Pulkit Ahuja, 2015
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This is a work of fiction. The characters, places, organisations and events described in this book are either a work of the authors imagination or have been used fictitiously. All the technologies mentioned and described in this book either existed at the time of its writing or were being developed in a clandestine way.
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the Publishers.
In loving memory of my dear Nanaji
Acknowledgements
A very big thanks to Mom, Dad and Bhai for their support and undying trust in my experiments. Without them, I would not have been possible.
A very big thanks to Abhijit Ghosh, Inderjit Singh Makkar, Lavanya Arora Sharma and all the wonderful folks at S&P Capital IQ, Gurgaon for nurturing an idea into being. Without them, this concept would not have been possible.
A special thanks to Nanima, Amit Chopra, Devan, Nehal Khosla, Sanchi Sethi and Vaibhav Tawakley for inspiring people around them to achieve bigger heights.
Last but not the least, a very big thanks to team Srishti for accepting and encouraging my writing. Without them, this book would not have been possible.
All the technologies mentioned and described in this book either existed at the time of its writing or were being developed in a clandestine way .
CONTENTS
The Anomaly
I t was a dark room with the only source of light being a strip of bright blue LEDs which formed an oval on the ceiling. The LED strip extended from above the table on which an old outdated computer terminal flickered on one side of the room to the creaky door on the other side of the room.
The operator sitting next to the computer screen looked perplexed and worried, having no idea about whether to act on what he was seeing on the black terminal screen, or to dismiss it outright as a technical glitch. He would have opted for the latter had it not been for one of the two golden rules that he had learned in the past two years of his work at this place, The Noek Never Errs .
On a usual day under normal circumstances, the screen would occasionally blurt out names of company stocks along with their suggested action Buy or Sell. And this would not happen more than five or six times a day. Some days had even gone by when the operator kept staring at the screen for the entire day with nothing to show for his toil.
But this first day of the New Year was not turning out to be like any other usual day, and it seemed that the poor operator had no idea about the things that were to follow the chain of events that had been triggered as soon as the clock struck twelve and the entire nation started celebrating the New Year in their online and socially networked world.
The operators gaze wandered over to the piece of paper that had been lying next to the screen since the past two years and then back to the black screen which was still flashing the same message in red:
This was a situation that required action and something needed to be done fast. Time was of essence and the young operators instructions were crystal clear when he had been hired for this job
He was to maintain no contact with the outside world; no vacations, and no leaving the terminal unattended by abandoning the room. He was to deliver the stocks name as soon as it flashed on the terminal along with its suggested action .
At first, these instructions had seemed pretty strange to young Jatin when they were laid down to him during the interview. To find out if it was a prank by his crazy friends, he had decided to play along. But the compensation package which included a joining bonus of twenty-five lakh rupees deposited in advance to an overseas account in his name removed this and any other such doubts that Jatin might have had about the seriousness of the offer.
So much money for such a simple job! Are these people crazy? he had said to himself. What Jatin had not realised at the time of accepting the offer was that he would be virtually disappearing from the face of the earth for the time he would be the operator. No questions asked.
But even then, one thing that the balding man with a strong Russian accent had not told Jatin when he hired him was what was Jatin supposed to do if the name on the screen was no longer a stock but a real person?
It was 1.15 a.m. already and the terminal screen was still repeatedly blinking the same message after every couple of minutes.
Jatins eyes glanced over to the paper again and again, unable to decide whether or not he should make the call. He decided that it was time to follow the second golden rule blindly, Whenever the Noek delivers a name, you make the call.
Without further ado, for the first time in his tenure as the operator, Jatin grabbed the second of the two phones lying in front of him and dialled the number which had the warning next to it
The phone was answered after a single ring and Jatin started, I think you should see this
He was interrupted before he could say anything further by a baritone voice he had never heard before, and the reply could not have been more precise
We know.
Beep, beep, beep!
And the call was disconnected.
Round Two
Price is what you pay. Value is what you get .
Warren Buffet
I t was an ethereal winter day, with light warm sunshine and cool winds. A happy day for people at the office of Pay-kwik Technologies. It was a day when at least two BMWs would be booked by the two co-founders of Pay-kwik. After all, they had just sold a minority stake of their company to JONAS Partners for a whopping fifty million dollars.
JONAS Partners was led by Akram, a dominating and go-for-the-kill kind of person who had little regard for anything that could not be expressed in terms of a pile of money. Akram had joined JONAS as a fresher straight out of Narsee Monjee College of Commerce and Economics, when JONAS Partners was just a five member team situated in a suburban Andheri West office. And over a span of fifteen years, through his intelligence coupled with his ruthless aggression and little regard for rules, Akram had literally propelled JONAS to become one of the biggest names in the Indian investment industry. It now had more than two hundred employees in five offices spread across the country.
