A strange legal document came to Profit a few weeks ago. The document was a court case filed by a Pakistani company called D-Tech Consultancy. In the case they had brought before the court, D-Tech had named Eric Yuan, the CEO of global video conferencing platform Zoom, as a defendant. Â
D-Tech, a little known Pakistani company based in Karachi, was suing Zoom. Why? Because according to them, Zoom owes D-Tech over a million dollars in unpaid commissions, and the company is now demanding that Zoom cough up $2.2 million in damages and losses. Â
So what’s the story behind the lawsuit? D-Tech Consultancy was apparently Zoom’s partner in Pakistan and had been given the status of authorised reseller. This essentially meant this company was a sales agent for Zoom, and would pitch the company’s products to big clients in Pakistan such as universities, government departments, and large corporations. In exchange for selling these deals, Zoom would pay them a one time commission.Â
D-Tech claims that in their time as a partner, they have made many big sales and Zoom has simply not paid them their commission. In response, Zoom has said nothing. Profit made multiple attempts to reach out to their management to no avail. But something else is strange in this story too. Where did D-Tech come from? How did it convince Pakistani companies to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a product like Zoom? And why is an international tech giant holding out a payment to a Pakistani partner that is peanuts to them? There is a lot more than meets the eye in this story. The content in this publication is expensive to produce. But unlike other journalistic outfits, business publications have to cover the very organizations that directly give them advertisements. Hence, this large source of revenue, which is the lifeblood of other media houses, is severely compromised on account of Profit’s no-compromise policy when it comes to our reporting. No wonder, Profit has lost multiple ad deals, worth tens of millions of rupees, due to stories that held big businesses to account. Hence, for our work to continue unfettered, it must be supported by discerning readers who know the value of quality business journalism, not just for the economy but for the society as a whole.To read the full article, subscribe and support independent business journalism in Pakistan
