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“A lot of companies share the same office address here,” says an old man in the elevator going up to the third floor of Maker Chamber V at Nariman Point. Maker Chamber is home to Omicron Steel Trades Private Limited, which owes Rs 205.19 crore to National Spot Exchange Limited (NSEL) investors, according to an August 29 update from NSEL.
The company’s location, Room No. 307, is at the end of a long corridor .It is in the same line as that of a foreign news service, opposite a technology company and next to the office of a regional daily called the Dainik Dabang.
Many of the offices here are shared ones, with each entrepreneur getting a table in the room and everybody sharing the rent, say the people here.
Room No. 307 doesn’t seem to be one of them, though. The in-charge of the place, a bespectacled man, denies any knowledge of the NSEL affair. “Didn’t you read about it in the papers? The amount involved is over Rs 5,500 crore…,” this reporter asks.
The name on the door says Maruti Strips and Ferro Alloys Private Limited. He says Omicron shifted out in April.
A couple of ladies at the office start Googling NSEL. They finally find Omicron and the Rs 159.96 crore they owe on the NSEL website. “That’s not a lot,” says the man. ‘A crore is nothing nowadays. So many shops have hundreds of crores of turnover.”
He joins the women at the computer reading out the name of the exchange; sounding out the syllables like the words of a foreign language. “The National Steel…” He finally gives the new address of Omicron - at Masjid Bunder. And no, there is no contact number. Like Maker Chamber’s, here too, the security guard doesn’t stop one from entering or even ask you to sign a register. On the first floor, a lone man sits in a single-room office. The window behind him is held together with cello-tape.
He says the Nariman point office is the place to be and is informed about the earlier visit.
He calls up someone and, when probed further about NSEL, smiles into the phone and hangs up. The owner is out of town. The man in the office joined only 15 days ago and doesn’t know anything about the business or the company, he says. He has no idea how to contact the owner either. He doesn’t even give the office land-line number, saying the phone hasn’t been working for six months. When reminded that the company hasn’t been in the office six months as it shifted only in April, he simply nods.
Omicron’s balance sheet on the Ministry of Corporate Affairs’ website makes for an interesting reading. The company had a share capital of Rs 3 crore and sales turnover jumped from Rs 232.41 crore in FY11 to Rs 1,289.34 crore in FY12.
“The company has developed a very good market for coils, sheets, plates, etc. not only in Mumbai, but all over Maharashtra , Gujarat and Karnataka,” it says. It had a profit after tax of Rs 2.17 crore for FY12, up from Rs 40.92 lakh in the previous year.
A more recent balance sheet may show where the money has gone. But that hasn’t been filed yet.
The contact details of Omicron gives the game up - Maruti Strips and Ferro Alloys, the first office at Nariman Point, is listed as an associate entity in Omicron’s balance sheet.
The email address for Omicron is marutistrips@gmail.com.
A new company from a group sometimes uses the address of an existing one for registration, even as it operates elsewhere. The old man was right.
And somebody should give the Nariman Point staff an Oscar award.
