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Micromax Informatics co-founder Rajesh Agarwal and six others were sent to seven days custody of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Thursday by the high court here on a bribery charge.
Agarwal and one Manish Tuli were arrested by CBI on Wednesday while allegedly giving a bribe of Rs 30 lakh to engineers of the North Delhi Municipal Corporation for clearance to a banquet hall construction.
The company on Thursday announced Agarwal had stepped down from his duties at Micromax. “He will focus on the legal proceedings to clear his name of the alleged charges,” it said, adding, “Manish Tuli has no association with the company. Rajesh Agarwal was present in his personal capacity with Manish Tuli.”
According to a CBI statement, the raid was on the basis of a tip. It did not reveal details about the source.
In the past few years, Micromax has attracted attention for both good and bad reasons. It was the first Indian company to eat into the shares of the global mobile handset giants in India, with aggressive pricing and a strong distribution network across the country. Interestingly, the network was in place before the company started selling handsets in 2008.
According to company documents, Micromax came into existence as an information technology software company in 2000 and was working on embedded platforms.
Agarwal
Co-founder Rajesh Agarwal had actually ventured into business almost a decade before Micromax was started. He founded Micromax in 1991 and his friends joined him as equal partners in 1999. At the time, Agarwal was a distributor for computer hardware of brands such as HP, Dell and Sony. With a degree in electrical engineering from the Institute of Engineering, Kolkata, he has worked at Pertech Computers and Universal Computers as a customer support engineer, before starting his own business.
According to people close to Agarwal, he has interests in real estate, investing in an individual capacity. He also serves as a director of Micromax Technologies and Shakun Buildwell Pvt Ltd. He is also Director of Micromax Informatics FZE, Micromax Hong Kong and Micromax Convergence, Inc.
According to company documents, Agarwal has been inspired by Warren Buffett and has a keen interest in volleyball, cricket and table tennis.
The firm
Micromax is backed by Sequoia Capital LLC, Madison Capital Corp, Sandstone Capital LLC and Spreadtrum Communications Inc. It ranked second in terms of smartphone sales for the first quarter of this year, with an 18.8 per cent market share, behind Samsung Electronics, according to researcher IDC. And, this has happened in just over five years.
Micromax makes and sells handsets and other mobile devices such as dongles and tablet computers in 14 countries. According to the Global Handset Vendor Market share report from Strategy Analytics, Micromax is the 12th largest handset manufacturer in the world. Based in Gurgaon, it has 23 offices in India and one each in Hong Kong and Dubai. Besides India, it has sales presence across Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal.
In a recent statement, Micromax stated it had a 24 per cent share in the smartphone market in India.
(according to Cyber Media Research).
