The subscription fee of Santanu Saikia's energy portal indianpetro.com would go as high as Rs 3 lakh per year for its clients, which as per the website, included many public sector undertakings and Ministries of Finance and Petroleum.
The subscription fee of Santanu Saikia's energy portal indianpetro.com would go as high as Rs 3 lakh per year for its clients, which as per the website, included many public sector undertakings and Ministries of Finance and Petroleum.
Saikia, who was arrested last week for his alleged role in stealing documents from power, coal and oil ministries, would sell these papers and other reports at a very high price to his corporate clients in India and abroad. "The subscription would range from Rs 20,000 to Rs 3 lakh per year. It completely depended on the profile of the company or individual," sources aware of Saikia's business model told dna.
A senior entrepreneur in energy sector informed that Saikia got privileged access in the government departments during the time of Atal Bihari Vajpayee led NDA government through an influential bureaucrat of those times, Ashok Saikia, who passed away in 2007. "It was on Ashok Saikia's insistence that then Ministry of Petroleum had subscribed to indianpetro.com," he said. However, when dna contacted both Finance and Petroleum Ministry about their subscription or advertising contracts with the energy portal, both denied.
According to the subscribers, who interacted with dna, the reports made by Indianpetro.com and its subsidiary websites were very expensive ranging from a few thousands to several lakhs. They were priced as high as international research reports.
For example the report Exploration Blocks Oil and Gas and CBM was priced Rs 1 lakh plus taxes. Similarly, Indian LNG Report - Indian Natural Gas market, Global LNG Trade Dynamics and Economic Viability of R-LNG in India was priced Rs 40,000 plus taxes, while Indian Gas Sector: A Paradigm Shift in Pricing Dynamics costed Rs 50,000 plus taxes. These reports were available both in hard copy and pdf form.
Indian Petro Group provides news, information and market intelligence in the Indian Oil & Gas, Power and Fertilizer Sectors. They used to provide niche business information, five days every week, in India through their exclusive, industry specific portals. The portal used to upload up to 500 pages of data, news and analysis every day into each of their sites.
However, the website just functions as a doorway to huge archives of classified information. After a few interesting inputs or analysis, if anybody wants to surf further, the website asks for registration. Once the registration is done, he or she gets a call from the website officials, who accordingly negotiate about the subscription price or price of the certain document.
According to an old blog of indianpetro.com the portal mainly depended on subscriptions and advertising for its revenue.
The subscription rates were classified into three categories - big corporate, small companies and individuals. The banner advertising and promotion is also a good revenue generator. The advertising and promotion plans being new, nevertheless are associated with the best known brands in the industry – Indian Oil, GAIL and TERI.
CRACKDOWN CONTINUES
Crime branch officials, on Tuesday, continued its crackdown in corporate espionage case, arresting a low ranking employee of defence ministry, who was remanded in police custody for one day.
The accused, identified as Virender Kumar, works as housekeeping staff at defence ministry and provided forged identity documents on official letterhead to another accused Lalta Prasad, who has been arrested as well. The total number of arrests in the case as of now is 14.
Police informed court on Tuesday that they have identified three more people, who aided the members of the racket in preparing forged identity documents and vehicle passes.
Also the five corporate executives arrested in the case were sent to judicial custody till March 3. The executives alleged before the court that investigating officers, forced them to sign on blank papers during custodial interrogation.
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