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This firm never paid bribe in 21 yrs….Prashanth G N
Bangalore: Nothing gets done in India without a bribe, especially in business. But Goa and Bangalore-based aerospace firm Turbocam International has defied all odds and not paid a single bribe from the day of its inception in 1989. That amounts to 21 years sans bribes—impossible but nevertheless true.
Duncan Watkinson, MD, and Daniel Devadatta, ambassador, Turbocam India Private Limited, told TOI: “We set up our company just as liberalization policies took off in 1989. Yet for the first four years, we were harassed by people from different quarters to pay up for permits. We refused each one of them and decided to wait. We didn’t pay a single agency or person. Our wait was successful when in 1993, we got the permit and our first import became a reality.”
They said: “We suffered delays and lost time, we even lost business along the way. But we were determined to live with a clean slate. We are going through a painful wait in Goa but we are not going to pay bribes for permits we need. We need 16 permits to set up an additional facility and only the first one has come through— the land was sanctioned in November 2010.”
HAL, a primary customer of Turbocam, has had an impeccable record with the company. “Not once has anyone in HAL ever indicated anything close to a bribe in all our transactions so far. HAL is the biggest
customer we have and they give us many projects,” they said. Watkinson and Devadatta say the company has acquired a reputation of not paying bribes in Goa, so much so that other companies have begun to emulate them. “Many companies are asking why they should pay bribes when Turbocam has managed not to, and yet successfully operates with profit.” Turbocam officials in Bangalore and Goa have the backing of their primary shareholders — owner Marian Noronha and his wife based in New Hampshire. Noronha, an engineer trained at BHU, India, set up the company at New Hampshire in 1985. |