56

SEP 2014 KENS CONNECT SEP 2014 KENS CONNECTSEP 2014 KENS CONNECT SEP 2014 KENS CONNECT

Purpose is the reason you journey,

Passion is the fire that lights your way.Passion drives one insane… it is passion that leads Rakesh Gujral to find the elusive treasure hidden beneath the wreck of archives and testimonies, making him the first and most probably, the only Asset Hunter in India. Here he talks of his journey to Ashitaa.

Asset Hunter… Seeks Beneficiaries

SEP 2014 KENS CONNECT SEP 2014 KENS CONNECT

57

SEP 2014 KENS CONNECT SEP 2014 KENS CONNECT

Asset Hunter… Seeks Beneficiaries The term Asset Hunter tickles your mind, urging the desire to know more. And this is what happened when I heard of Mr Rakesh Gujral aka Cokes. And I just wanted to know more.

Remarkably, the initiation into this wonderful journey for Rakesh began in Nepal. An investor by profession, he paid a visit to his friends in Kathmandu (Nepal) way back in 1997. A pile of annual reports of some Indian Companies, lying as junk, fascinated Cokes and drew him into the world of Documents and records. The reports seemed to suggest that assorted Nepalese had stake in Indian companies in the form of shares and investments. Now the question was – did these companies exist; and if yes, were the investments still there? The search had to be manual, the era being pre Google and pre widespread internet. There was no data available if the company was merged with another one or renamed itself or gone under. It had to be a dig and dig and dig ops…

The manual search brought him to the Registrar of Company Offices of different states. He searched records of almost each old company which had filed its records with RoC - you name it

and he has inhaled the dust & grime of every record available within the premises of related offices and companies. Three years of search ops and legal procedures later, the family got the monies... leading many others in Nepal to approach him for similar matter, with similar old records.

Sipping green tea- which seems to go on unendingly with him, he stated: “While today there are around 12000 companies regis-tered with Registrar of Compa-nies (Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Bangalore, Cochin, Hyderabad and various more), only 1100 were established before 1960s. And I targeted only those. Al-though initially I was looking only for Nepalese names but few more Non-Indian, Non Ne-pali names caught my attention. There were Sri Lankans, South Africans, Burmese and British who had investments in India and such investments still lie with In-dian companies unattended and unclaimed”

The passage of his cruise now shifted from “Company via People” to “People via company”.

In his hunt, Cokes came across the names of members of royal

A total of 5,400 share certificates worth Rs 5,40,000 of The Howrah Shrakhalla Light Railway Company Limited issued to Sir T C Mowden, Hyderabad dated 2nd April 1900.

Foreign nationals did buy shares in In-dian companies. Image of original share certificates of many such companies.

During the pre-independence era, British were presiding all over the Business, Administration and also Polity. The Managing Agency houses like Martin Burn & Co, Jardine Henderson, Bird & Co, Andrew Yule & Co, Mcleod & Co, Duncan Brothers etc. had the `Gora’ all over the place. They owned and managed Tea estates, Railways, Airlines, Power Utilities, Coal, Jute, Cotton Textile etc. Their belief of coming back, as they left, did not materialise. And the investments ended up ‘forgotten & unclaimed’ with the Indian companies. The intrusiveness and love for old archives made Cokes hunt for the legitimate heir of these assets, that he had stumbled into.

58

SEP 2014 KENS CONNECT SEP 2014 KENS CONNECTSEP 2014 KENS CONNECT SEP 2014 KENS CONNECT

Share certificates of The East Indian Coal Company Limited and Durbhanga Suger Company Limited Issued in 1909 and 1943 respectively.

family of Ranas, Jung Thapas, Panths, and several more from England and America having investments in industries like jute, tea, cotton & engineering sectors, and many more.

The hunt just does not end at unearthing the lost assets; I offer them a complete package, from obtaining the legal representation from the courts to transfer of assets to their names and sale of the assets and remittance through banking channel. Many a times, such offers are not very appealing to the beneficiaries - it is more difficult to persuade the family clan to get proper documents and facilitate the legal procedures to claim the same. Certain Country policies and Personal or Religious beliefs also prove to be a hindrance. At times, it takes years for a family to respond back with the documents and then, the family expects a fairy with magic wand to bring their assets to them in blink of a moment. “Unfortunately, that does not happen in our world” Cokes muttered.

In 2005-2006, family researchers from UK got associated with Cokes and aided in finding people’s legitimate heir for the assets, initiating a new journey.

“Few people do send random mails asking to find about their ancestors assets without having

any knowledge or documentation to support that. That irks me.” said the unruffled guy sitting in front of me, still with a mug of green tea.

‘GRAVEYARD TOURISM’

When it came to talking about Graveyard Tourism, the area of my true interest - which had actually embedded this guy in my mind, Cokes was reticent. Lot of digging and coercing gave me a sketchy idea of all it entails…

Many foreigners want to trace their relatives, who died and were cremated in India pre-independence. The records are non-existent and details are meagre, yet the urge to trace one’s roots does dictate.

“It is a huge challenge as we don’t have any data base with records of the graves as can be found in UK and US. And initially, it was horrifying to know that over a period of time, the same grave can be used to bury someone else”.

But does his passion support his livelihood?

“If you are rich you never calculate and I never calculate” concluded the Asset Hunter, “as it is, money cannot compensate for what I achieve.”

Website: www.fundtracers.com

Blog: http://fundtracers.blogspot.com/