At one point of time, Satyam Computer Services and trust seemed synonymous within the industry. But the tragic unwinding of the Chairman’s fraud changed the perception of the industry. As this scandal unfolded, businesses around the world felt the heat and realized the need of the forensic accounting profession. “Our advisors and the directors were the people behind investigation of the Satyam accounting fraud,” says a proud Apurva Joshi, Director, Riskpro Management Consulting Pvt. Ltd.
India forensic is a brand owned by Riskpro and has pioneered the forensic accounting movement in India. It predicted in September 2008 that as many as 1200 Indian listed companies could have been indulging into the financial statement frauds and many of them were predicted to be IT companies. When Satyam episode was exposed, investors felt cheated losing substantial amount in the written off investments. Riskpro’s ‘think tank’ realized the need of the Due Diligence services.
Businesses are taking a cautious approach analyzing potential risks as well as backgrounds of those they are going to give their hard earned money. Failure in doing the due might lead businesses to lose not only money but also significant goodwill. HP-Autonomy deal is the classic case of due diligence disasters. Coming as a savior, Riskpro Management Consulting Pvt. Ltd., a 2008 founded company, safeguards businesses, particularly IT companies on the shopping spree, around the globe by providing investigative due diligence and business intelligence services.
Based in Pune, the company works with numerous boutique due diligence and investigative firms worldwide in the area of foreign corrupt practices act. It is not easy to identify the corruption activities; however, with the unique database called Biznexxus, Riskpro identifies the whose who of the corporate world. This database and the technology built around the same is the IP of Riskpro and no company in this domain can match the results of its database search.
Utilizing a vast network of professional resources strategically located throughout key regions of the Asia Pacific, South Asia, and the Middle East, the company provides innovative due diligence solutions, software products and certifications related to the forensic accounting, fraud investigation, due diligence & risk management to simplify the complex issues. Given the slowing economy and a number of soured investments, investors as well as lenders are doing a lot more homework before finalizing a deal. They are constantly looking at new ways of analyzing their dealings and the associated risks. “We endeavor to create technology aided products to help lenders, investors and acquirers. For instance, while intelligence gathering about an investor, we found nothing objectionable about the promoters. But delving deep, we realized that website of the said investor was owned by a person having connections with politically sensitive entities. Finding this was possible through our product – ‘Due Diligence over Websites’ that investigates the websites of the target borrowers or the investors,” says Apurva.
Operating in a lesser known but highly lucrative domain, Riskpro faces shortage of skilled resources with investigative mindset. To overcome this, the organization has launched its own certification programs on forensic accounting through India forensic, which pioneers the forensic accounting education in India, has helped the company attract best talents of the industry.
With the most cost optimized solutions, Riskpro is well positioned in the lenders market and also serves various institutional and high net worth individual investors. In the days to come, the company envisions targeting investors as clients and offering them a bouquet of services such as forensics, intelligence and database checks to establish a larger footprint in the market.
Original story Appeared in Silicon India on 29th July’2014
