My name is Winnie. I need to tell my story to the world to prevent any further pain and agony from Avinash (Avi) G. Samudrala and Steve Ludmer and their company, Ask Sunday. For anybody that thought these guys were running a legitimate personal outsourcing business, THINK AGAIN. For anybody that thought these guys were decent human beings who have any sense of how to treat other people, THINK AGAIN. Hopefully friends, family, acquaintances, classmates, former and future employers, employees, and customers will get to know the REAL side of these guys.
I met Avi in Hyderabad through some mutual friends. When he heard I was looking for a job he told me about his great little start-up, who at the time was miraculously making its rounds through the NY Times and Time's "Top Ten Websites of the Year." He told me how valuable my experience in finance and strategy at a Fortune 500 company would be to the small team and promised me that working for him would be a great opportunity. I was so excited that I began on-boarding in November 2007, two months before they were due to arrive back in India.
When they landed in January, the first thing on my mind was to negotiate my salary and contract and I brought it up several times with Steve and Avi, including at a team meeting on a Saturday, several times in person at the office, and on Google chat numerous times. Each occasion was met with the response, "Let's talk about this on [Friday / later in the week] when we aren't as busy" or "Talk to Steve / Avi." But I was so excited to work and put my skills and talents to work, I continued to show up, often working US hours until 3 or 4 in the morning. I didn't press the topic too harshly, as I had my faith in these two guys who seemed to be hard-working and decent.
Finally on Feb 18 (almost 2 months later) after some more prodding, two days before my birthday, they were ready to talk. It was at the popular Hyderabad restaurant, Little Italy, that Avi (Steve stayed back for a "meeting") told me that they wouldn't need me any more due to an uncertain future. We established that I would definitely be compensated for my time, but didn't discuss details since Avi wanted to talk it over with Steve.
Almost a month later, on March 11 I received the following email from Steve:
Two days later I responded with this email:
Subsequently, Avi attempted to contact me over the phone, but since I had left the country reception was bad and I asked him to respond via email. As the days grew, it became clear to me that they were not going to pay me what I deserved, or even what I earned, and responded thusly:
Although I knew that it would be better to have any further conversations by email (simply for my own uncontrollable anger and documentation purposes), I knew that they wouldn't be the better person and that I would have to call them. Over the 30 minute conversation with Avi, he first disputed the fact that I even worked full-time at Sunday, and thusly did not deserve any more than their offer of Rs40,000 (US$1000). After my thorough evidence / explanation of my full-time status, he then disputed the fact that I was eligible to work for them. While it is true that I was not authorized to work in India, they were actually fully aware of this as I had brought this up in the first phone conversation we had. Avi's reply was that it would not be a problem, since they were a US company and I would be working under that entity. Lastly, Avi stated that even the COO, Hemaprasad Veeramachaneni was not paid well (less than US$12,000 per year), as if that was justification for not paying me as well. In the end, the conversation was not productive and left me livid. I ended it by telling him I would see him in court.
Over the next couple weeks, I explored legal recourse and gathered evidence against them. Local Indian residents discouraged me from pursuing legal action in India, as the justice system is too corrupt and inefficient. I researched small claims courts in the US and while I had enough evidence to prove that I worked full-time for them for approximately 3 months and tried several times to talk with them about my salary and future at the company, I realized how expensive and time-consuming this would be, since the claim has to be filed in the city which the company is based (New York) and at the time I was in India and resided in California.
I finally decided that my best recourse would be to take this to the internet, since I hope that my story will deter future employers, employees, and customers from working with these guys. They have shown through this incident that they have no sense of morals or ethics. They are indecent people who not only don't know how to run a company, but don't know how to treat employees or customers alike. During my days at the company, they berated and exploited the local Indian employees, loudly criticizing their every mistake in front of the entire office. The employees became so scared of sending out simple emails that they wanted me to check EVERY outbound communication with Sunday members. The COO, Hema showed me several emails where Avi had used inappropriate explicatives and derogative names towards him. These employees were not paid nor treated well. A new policy was initiated while I was working there to dock employees a half day of pay for showing up 10 minutes to 1 hour late, and a full day's pay for any second after one hour (this is NOT a typical policy in India, where traffic is often a problem). In a city known for its' diversity, they were not allowed to speak any of their native languages at the office. Several employees, hinting at immense dissatisfaction, left in the short time that I worked there. In April, I even learned that Sunday was outsourcing their operations to Knoah Solutions, a BPO in Hyderabad. I'm not sure what this means for the employees there (although Hema, the COO told me he was let go without acknowledgment of his efforts, or even a severance package). While I definitely feel cheated, I feel worse for the local Indian employees that were exploited, and had no choice but to leave and find a new job.
For sure, I have learned a lot from this experience. I know I was too naive and believed too much in the covenant of good faith and fair dealings; I should have demanded contract and salary talks right away. But I truly believe that in the end, no matter what precautions I could have made, these guys are so unethical and immoral that something else would have gone wrong.
A couple weeks ago I had still not come to terms with this incident and was livid, depressed, and a bit delirious. At this point, I knew I would not receive any compensation, but just wanted an acknowledgment of my accomplishments and an apology for not being able to compensate me fairly (not just argue that I didn't deserve it). My boyfriend Albert even wrote an email to them, however to this day we have received no response.
Just goes to show, that these guys have no shred of decency, morals, or ethics. They shouldn't be trusted at school, work, or even personal dealings. STAY AWAY FROM THESE GUYS!
