Speak Asia Online @ BehindMLM

Speak Asia’s COO, Tarak Bajpai was put in the awkward position of having to be the public face of Speak Asia after he was arrested back in late July. With Speak Asia’s Gobal CEO, Harendar Kaur and its Indian CEO, Manoj Kumar both hiding overseas from Indian authorities, Bajpai at first played the hero role [Continue reading…]

As many of you who have been following the Speak Asia drama in India know, yesterday was the 17th of October Supreme Court hearing of a PIL filed by a group of panelists. Among those who had to respond were Speak Asia themselves and the RBI. Whilst the RBI didn’t show up, Speak Asia did… [Continue reading…]

Something about Manoj Kumar’s video appearances have always struck me as odd. Simply put, he just doesn’t have any natural on-screen charisma and always comes off as awkwardly acting the part, rather than speaking candidly. These characteristics were quite obvious in Kumar’s last video appearance for Speak Asia, dated early August. Now, Kumar’s lack of [Continue reading…]

This morning I read Ashok Bahirwani’s 2nd October 2011 AISPA update. As usual, whilst Bahirwani’s report does contain some useful information and clarification, it’s still riddled with mistruths, distortions and at times completely false allegations. I’m starting to think dissecting Bahirwani’s updates might make for a regular feature on BehindMLM.

Despite vehemently denying the fact that Speak Asia wasn’t just making up its surveys and relying on new membership fees to generate profit, it has come to light that Speak Asia’s surveys were indeed ‘sourced mostly from Wikipedia and other sites on the Internet‘. A far cry from the corporate clients the company claimed to [Continue reading…]

I was forced to start this update today with the above proverb after reading various news items which were not only factually incorrect but in most case was an attempt to place before the readers/viewers old wine in a new bottle. This is the case of churning out old news in new packaging. Was this [Continue reading…]

One of the long-standing criticisms of Speak Asia since the Indian regulators clamped down on the pyramid scheme back in May has been the lack of an ‘exit option’ for panelists. Once signed up the company, members thus far have been unable to leave the company, much the less request a refund seeing as how [Continue reading…]

Shortly after Speak Asia global CEO Harendar Kaur siphoned off over one hundred million US dollars of panelist’s money to Singapore, she and fellow Indian CEO Manoj Kumar went into hiding. Rumoured to be hiding out in Dubai, the last we heard from either of them was when Kumar put out a video following the [Continue reading…]

After launching in May 2010, in just under a year Speak Asia Online had amassed a membership base of 1.8 million (or 2.2 million, depending on who you talk to) members. Make no mistake, this in itself is a majorly impressive feat that a lot of MLM companies can only dream about. Let that sink [Continue reading…]

I’m not entirely sure who’s behind the All India SpeakAsia Panelist Association (AISPA) save to say that the website domain aispa.co.in is owned by some guy called Atul Kulkarni of Karnanisoft Technologies. Nonetheless, AISPA spokesperson Ashok Bahirwani has been publicly covering recent legal developments between Speak Asia and the various regulators investigating the company. Till [Continue reading…]