1. PROFESSIONAL:

a) Zero Learning:

i. The firm has a very high attrition rate. This ensures there arent many experienced people

around to help, train or guide you in any way. If you happen to be an IIM Grad or with

some experience, youll be made to lead a team in less than 3 months without any support,

hand holding or help. This by no means is a quick step to growth or promotion. Youll both

make big blunders in front of the client and get severe kickbacks at the start of your career

or in order to play safe, youll start following and doing what the client asks you to, without

using much of your own brains or innovation. Either way, its a hopeless choice.

ii. Most of your time will be spent on training young, absolutely inexperienced undergraduate

students when you yourself need to be doing a lot of learning

iii. The company has no training or development policy whatsoever. The only training sessions

we had were for basic excel or powerpoint functions, something we picked up in 1st year

btech itself.

iv. 100% of the companys projects are of PMO (Project Management Office) in nature. That

the firm is an offshoot of Mckinsey and that they do strategy consulting is all bullshit. PMO

is the cheapest and the lowest form of consulting that any firm can do. Even that is not

done professionally here. Not one of their consultants is either PMP or PRINCE 2 certified.

Youll realise how worthless you have been here once you go out in the job market and try

your luck again

b) Compensation issues:

i. The firm is highly stingy when it comes to making any cash payments. The pay is inflated

in several manners as described below

ii. There will be a variable component which you get if you stick around for 2 years.

Considering that the highest that an employee has stayed here is 20 months and avg

being 6 months, given the immense torture they give, you can assume that portion is

never going to be paid to you

iii. A portion of your salary will be gratuity. You get that if you stick around for 4 years.

Needless to say, you never get it too.

iv. The firm charges a fee of 2000 rs each month for using the company laptop for official

purposes. You are not allowed to bring your personal laptop and you have to use and pay

for the company laptop

v. There is a mandatory deduction from your salary each month and it goes as a

contribution towards one Takshashila School in Ghaziabad. This school is a private

business of Manish Aggarwal and everyone contributes towards it

vi. Therell be reimbursable components of Medical bills and Telephone allowance which

you get if you submit bills. There is absolutely no process for getting these things cleared

(the firm does not have a finance person BTW) and theyll never be cleared. Mine got

cleared when I finally resigned from the firm and asked for these bills to be cleared in my

final payout.

vii. The firms cash flow situation keeps getting precarious from time to time. When that

happens, the newer and unstable employees or the ones on notice period get no salaries

for several months. Many have resigned during such periods and foregone the entire

amount.

viii. There are absolutely no flybacks or allowances if you are working late in the night. People

pay for their dinner and cabs out of their pockets when they work over night at client

sites without any reimbursements. Once deputed on a project, you come back only when

the project is completed, which could be anywhere between 4 to 6 months. Any travel in

between to your hometown is at your own expense.

ix. Given lack of experienced consultants and low quality of work, the only way TKC can

compete with other firms and keep getting contracts is through extremely low price bids,

ridiculously long work hours promise, favours to senior client officials in the form of

booze parties where young girls are brought for them and agreeing to long accounts

receivable cycles.

All these will ensure that you never do quality work and progress professionally. Also the

firm never gets cash rich enough to give you pay hikes and promotions. Infact high

attrition rate suits the firm. People leave and they hire fresh at lower salaries.

c) Personal issues:

i. The firm shall sign a work contract where they promise to provide manpower at 90

hrs/week rate. You will literally burn yourself out here. A typical schedule is where you

wake up at 6:30, leave home by 7 or 7:30, grab a paratha or sandvich and stuff it while

you yourself are stuffed in a cab (at times 5 in a hatchback + driver) and be back by 11 or

11:30 in night. Youll come back home, have a mid-night dinner daily and sleep.

ii. Considering the harrowing schedule, most people request for a company guesthouse.

This is basically a flat rented out in some god forsaken locality where you need to walk a

mile to get an auto, furnished with basic stuff and given out on twin sharing basis. They

charged 15000/month/person in my time for that facility. Theyll have servants there for

cooking, cleaning and driving you to work, so that you work like machines 15x6

iii. There is a very sad degree of micromanagement and interference in ones personal life in

the guesthouses. The cooks, cleaners and drivers are given clean instructions to report

every word of your conversation to Manish Agrawal. Any instance of you cribbing,

complaining, joking, or making a satirical remark on the firm or its culture or your own

miserable life shall be promptly reported to Manish. You shall then be taken to task and

given a stern warning, accusing of spreading a negative environment in the firm while all

others are positive. Except when you are in the bathroom or sleeping in bed at night, you

are monitored everywhere (dining table, common rooms, cab while travelling). Therell

be other spies who do less consulting but are paid for being informers. They keep a watch

on you while you are at work. One such spy shall be deputed in each project team.

iv. Therell be every attempt to break you off from any support system you have. Your

attempts to travel and meet your family, friends, girlfriends/boyfriends or relatives shall

be sabotaged at some or the other excuse. Spying will create a highly suspicious

atmosphere inside the firm. The end objective is to make you so weak that you never

protest against the injustices and remain in Manishs firm control.

d) Support System:

i. There is absolutely no IT, Admin or Finance department in the firm. HR was brought in 15

days before I moved out.

ii. This means that if you face any IT related issue with your laptop, you contact the

customer care or service centre, go and get your company laptop repaired. Any bills

generated are to be reimbursed.

iii. Lack of finance department means all bill reimbursements go for a toss. Like I mentioned

before, mine were reimbursed when I was leaving the firm. The firm refused to transfer

my PF from my previous firm to TKC. They cited lack of bandwidth and knowhow for the

same. Finally I had to apply for PF withdrawal with my previous firm.

e) Legal Issues:

i. There is absolutely no firm legally registered as Takshashila Consulting anywhere. The

original business is basically an education business, the school in Ghaziabad, registered in

the name of Takshashila Edupunk Private Limited. An educational venture is to save on

taxes and in its guise, he runs a consulting firm.

ii. To avoid giving you any legal tool to fight against the firm, you never get any document

from the firm in hard copy. There are no letter heads. All your joining and relieving letters

are soft copies emailed to you. Those letters also sport the name of takshashila edupunk

pvt ltd in the footer for each page.

iii. You never get any salary slips. Every month, you get a breakup of your salary in the form

of a table, pasted in email body, emailed to you. Not even a downloadable word or PDF

file. In case you need pay slips when you apply for a new job, you need to inform Manish

in advance, and request him to make a few pay slips and give them to you.

iv. The firm deducts a portion from your salary for accident and medical insurance. But in

reality it never buys the same. No one ever gets any mediclaim card or other document. I

was hospitalised twice during my stay at TKC and each time I paid out of my own pocket.

On being questioned about my medical insurance, the amount stopped being deducted

from next month. There was no insurance.

v. The only legal proof of your employment is that the firm deposits tax on your behalf with

income tax department. At the end of the year you get a form 16 from income tax

department which too mentions you as an employee of Takshashila Edupunk Private

Limited.

vi. As the name suggests, the firm is a private limited firm. There is no partnership model as

with consulting firms. Manishll project a few other people as partners in the firm. But

basically those are merely high level employees. You are low level employees. And he

runs the firm with a dictatorial authority as the single owner.

f) Moral Issues:

i. Both Manish and his Father are big time womanisers. They need women for themselves

and to woo clients. And this he does by getting young, gullible, 20 yrs old undergraduates

from Delhi University. Most of the time hell throw them lavish booze parties, get them

drunk and then try and molest them.

ii. Having broken their support system, they mostly wont have anyone to turn to and then

will either be crying alone or come and seek help from helpless you. If you can tolerate

this kind of cheapness going on day in and day out, you may ignore point number (f) and

proceed. This however will not affect you adversely in anyway if you are a male

candidate.

FINAL WORD:

TKC primarily hires 3 kinds of people for following reasons

Type Key Feature Resultant Mindset Key Role

Undergraduates (Delhi University)

Female, Extremely beautiful, Inexperienced

Inexperienced and no idea of job market. So desperate to retain their first job at any cost

Satisfy Manish, his father and clients. Get molested regularly

Mid tier MBAs (MDI,IMT,New IIMs), IITians, MBAs from obscure foreign univs

Good Academics

Dont get consulting companies in campus. So want to stick around in consulting at any cost

Slog and execute most projects. Key beast of labour

Top Tier MBAs (A,B,C) Pathetic Academics

Too pathetic acads to get a consulting job. So want to retain the one they got, desperately

Their degrees used to pitch fancy team profiles in front of client to win projects. Then they too slog like animals on project

Finally, the only reason why anyone should join TKC is if he cannot get consulting in any other way,

and he is desperate to get consulting only, then TKC will help him write Consultant in his profile.

He may then go ahead and find a better job from market after an year.