Students spy for quick bucks

Lurking in the soundproof boardrooms and corridors of your office, might be an innocent face gaining access to your trade secrets as we speak. An audacious form of corporate espionage is emerging where b-school students hired by your competitor go undercover and get classified information out. This is how the game is played..

Like a game of bridge, corporates hold their cards close. Each one watches the other's strategy closely, giving little away, to find that perfect moment and reveal the ace hidden up their sleeve. A few call it business strategy, while others call it corporate espionage. The ace is a management student planted in a rival organisation. And if you need proof, then here is what a final year student from one of the country's leading business school has to say, on the condition of anonymity.

Here's how the spying game began. Ram (not his real name) is a 25 year-old, who saw a multinational bank's advertisement on the notice board, asking students to apply for a company project. The offer was exciting and it was a chance to work with a famous brand name. Ram applied and was accepted. His profile was to do a simple benchmarking exercise for the company. He had to compare his employer's business practises with its competitors. Harmless? Not quite. Ram actually was instructed by his company mentor to dig out information from other banks, posing not as an employee but as a student. Ram managed to break all security barriers and gain access to classified information of ten banks! And he did this, for an MNC bank eyeing to overtake its competition.

He told CNBC-TV18, "You approach the right people in the right department but it's not that easy to get the information because it's out of the public domain. If I go as a representative of x bank to y bank, I am definitely not going to get that kind of information. I got out information like bank tie-ups, their product features, the extent of discounts offered to high networth individuals and other such information that is classified and hence out of the public domain."
 
Once Ram got access to the rival bank, it was simple. He asked questions and the staff answered willingly. After all this was a young b-school student, diligently doing his homework. What they didn’t know was that Ram was in fact the Trojan horse who had infiltrated forbidden business territory. 
 
While students fall prey easily without thinking the risks through, they are also the most willing to do the job as well. They get to work with renowed corporate names and ofcourse make a quick buck in the bargain. A student can earn anywhere between Rs 1,000 to Rs 3,000 for each of these benchmarking projects that last 2-3 weeks. Apparently, students across campuses say that such offers are common and many admitted that they had been approached by companies for such favours.

Although sending out students under the guise of doing surveys is the most prevalent, it is not the only way these interns are being misued. Many interns are sent to rival organisations as employees of another company. Corporate India is reacting to this new trend of espionage and are taking it seriously. Chairman & Managing Director, Kingfisher Airlines, Vijay Mallaya says, ""If people are stooping to the level, of sending students as implants, it's serious and I think it's not a practice that should be encouraged."

Experts say although many corporates do resort to such practices, it’s more prevalent among the smaller firms. Human resources consultant, Vikram Bharadwaj explains, "There are tier 2 or tier 3 companies who find it an attractive proposition to hire these people on a contract, vis-a-vis pay a huge sum of money as consulting fee to a large research firm or a consulting firm to get the kind of data that is not readily available to them, from a purely market basis."
 
Hiring consultancy firms to do these benchmarking exercises would cost anywhere between Rs 50,000 to a few lakhs, depending on the kind of project and the consultancy firm hired. So, an innocent student becomes a deadly weapon and this weapon has now making corporate India feel threatened. 
Partner, Ernst & Young, Ashvin Parekh says, "I think getting classified information using students is becoming very rampant and companies should get concerned." Group Chief HR Officer, ICICI Bank, K Ravikumar adds, "I am pretty concerned about this and especially using students for this is setting very bad ethical norms at a very early stage for students."
 
To protect their turf, companies are now tightening security norms. Anyone who comes seeking information for a survey is forced to go through proper channels or departments like human resources, to access any information. So, as a result of such sneaky methods being employed, Bharadwaj says "verbal communication is totally being restricted. If there is some information that someone needs, there is a proper protocol to be followed." As companies are becoming aware, background checks are being done, not only for employees but also interns. Partner, KPMG, Amandeep Singh explains, "Anyone who enters the premises - even the consultants or the students have to go through the background checks." 
 
Even with safeguards, experts say it's easy to get information using this model. Students say that, corporates never mention the ways in which they are expected to get this information out from other companies. Either their mentors tell them, or it is assumed to have been understood. But what students who agree and are more than willing to do this, don't know is that they could face serious legal imlications.
 
In fact, most of them believe it's perfectly ethical and legal and that companies can also get the same information from a market survey. Some glibly say that, all's fair in love, war and business, while others don;t feel ethics come into it at all because of the competitive environment. But what these students probably don't know or want to think of, is the havoc these practices might wreck on their future careers. They might not know that the price of such unethical practices might not look good on their CV. After all, who would want to hire sneaky traitors with no loyalty whatsover toward their employers?  

Payal Goel