I run a fairly successful solar products manufacturing company called Saurally Solar. I have been building it for years, interacting with real customers, real deals and bearing real headaches. So when someone tries to take me for a ride, I don't just feel cheated. I feel disrespected. This is exactly what happened when an old college junior tried to pull me into an MLM scam dressed up as an "e-commerce business opportunity." Here is the full story.
It Started With a Facebook Message
About a year ago, I got a message on Facebook from Deepti. She was a junior from my engineering college days in Bangalore. Same department. We hadn't spoken in over 12 years. Honestly, I barely remembered her. But I was happy to catch up. That's how most of us are with old college people, right? We chatted for a few days. It felt normal enough. Then she asked for my number. I gave it without thinking twice.
That's when the tone started changing.
She started asking a lot of questions about my business. How is Saurally Solar doing? What is the scale? What is the revenue? I answered honestly because I have nothing to hide. But now I realise she was quietly figuring out whether I was a good target. She also mentioned, very casually, that she was "in e-commerce." But every time I asked what exactly she was doing, she would dodge the question. Never a straight answer.
What she did show me plenty of were photos on social media. Trips to Malaysia, Singapore, Sri Lanka. Fancy hotels, group photos, captions that screamed success. At the time I honestly wondered if she was into some kind of grey market import business, bringing in luxury goods illegally. That's how shady the whole thing felt. I should have trusted that gut feeling.
A long Silence
A few months passed. Then she started pushing me to meet her "senior partner." I told her I was going to Europe with my family for a month — a holiday we had been planning for a while. She didn't push before I left. She waited. By the time she finally set up the meeting with this senior, almost three months had gone by. At that time I thought things were just moving slowly. But later I understood this waiting was deliberate. She was building suspense, perhaps. Making it feel like I was being specially considered for something. Making me curious. She kept telling me that the the senior partner is very busy and can take out limited time for me. We'll that is understandable for someone who is running a serious business from an upper management position.
And here is the interesting part. After I did my research, I found out that just before she arranged my meeting with Madhusudan, Deepti had returned from a "business trip" to Sri Lanka. These trips to Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore are not holidays. They are not even real business trips. These MLM groups hold what I can only call motivational brainwashing sessions in South East Asian countries. Big gatherings. Speeches. Group energy. People pumping each other up to go back home and recruit more people. They do it outside India because if something like this happened here, people would protest. There might be arrests. These countries give them a quieter place to operate. I had actually asked Deepti about Singapore and Malaysia — simple questions like what's the culture like, how is life there. She told me she never got time to explore. They were packed with back-to-back meetings the entire time. Back-to-back meetings. In Singapore. Without ever stepping out to see the city. That is not a business trip. That is a conditioning camp.
So she came back from Sri Lanka, freshly motivated, and immediately scheduled my intro meeting with Madhusudan. The timing was not a coincidence.
The Starbucks That Felt Like a Trap
She called the meeting her "senior partner introduction." We met at a Starbucks on Lavelle Road in Bangalore. The moment I walked in, something felt wrong about the whole place. Almost every single table had small groups of people sitting very close together, speaking quietly, intensely. Multiple pitch meetings happening at the same time in the same café. It felt less like a coffee shop and more like a hunting ground.
Madhusudan was running late. While we waited, a young man named Rakshit joined us. He introduced himself as a BITS Pilani graduate, 2024 batch. Now I'm not from BITS myself, but I have close friends who are. So I casually dropped a couple of names — people he should definitely know if he had studied there. He had no idea who I was talking about. Blank face. That was the first warning sign. It became clear very quickly that Rakshit was only there to build up Madhusudan before he arrived. Basically a warm-up act. And the BITS background was probably just something he said to sound credible.
The Navy Trick
Then Madhusudan arrived. He made quite an entrance — the kind of entrance you practise. He was wearing a blazer with an Indian Navy insignia brooch pinned to it. Deepti introduced him as a retired Lieutenant Commander. I want to say something about this specifically, because I think it matters. I have heard that a good number of people who served in the Navy on short-service or temporary commission, they were not full career officers. They find themselves without direction after their time ends. Some of them fall into these networks. The Navy background may be real on paper. But what they are selling is the image of it. The rank, the discipline, the blazer and the brooch, all of it being used not to serve the country, but to make a stranger trust them at a coffee table.
Whether Madhusudan really was a Navy officer or just wearing that brooch for effect — the result is the same. He was using the reputation of an institution that lakhs of soldiers have built with real sacrifice, to run a recruitment pitch. That is not just dishonest. It is deeply disrespectful to the Navy, and to the person sitting across from him.
Two Hours of Talking. Zero Substance.
He sat down, shook my hand, and talked for two straight hours. I use the word "talked" and not "conversation" on purpose. He was not interested in listening. He spoke about life goals, family, comfort, legacy. He did the "Rich Dad Poor Dad" routine. He asked whether I wanted to give my parents and wife a really comfortable life.This is where I started getting genuinely irritated.
I run a successful company with 25 employees. I am not sitting around wishing someone would rescue me financially. His whole pitch was built on the assumption that I was somehow struggling or unfulfilled and that he had the answer. He had never asked me a single real question about my life. He was running a script. And the script assumed I was desperate. He repeated the same emotional points again and again, just in different words each time. Waiting for something to hit. And through all of this not once did he say the name of the company. Not the platform name. Not the founder. Not a single product name. Nothing you could go home and Google.
Any real business tells you who they are in the first five minutes. This man spent two hours on emotion and zero minutes on facts. That is not carelessness. That is a deliberate move to keep you from verifying anything before you commit.
The Number
After two hours, he finally got to the point. If I was interested, I would first need to attend a six-hour "orientation meeting." After that, I would pay ₹4.25 Lakhs. In return, I would get membership to the platform, distribution rights, and the ability to bring in more distributors and earn commission from them. He also told me I would receive physical products — luxury goods, he said. Limited edition wristwatches. An air purifier. I could even choose from a catalogue.
Now, I had actually seen the watches that some people from their team were wearing. Unknown brands. Not Rolex, not Titan, not even anything I could place. The kind of watch that does not exist in any shop anywhere. It has no open market value, no resale value, no brand that anyone recognises. It exists only inside this network, passed from one paying member to the next. The product is not the business. The product is just there so they can say "you are buying something" and avoid being called a straight-up scam legally. He then said that someone would call me within 24 hours and I should decide fast because others were ready to join and spots were limited. Three months of waiting and suspense. Then a 24-hour deadline. That flip is not accidental, it is designed to panic you into saying yes before you think it through.
I thanked him, said goodbye, and left.
The Next Morning
Deepti messaged me. I decided to stop being polite. I asked her directly — "Deepti, what exactly are you selling? Have you lost money in this and are you now trying to get it back by pulling others in?" She replied immediately. Said she was doing "more than fine." Said "they work as a family." They work as a family. I have heard this exact phrase before, in similar situations. It always means one thing _stop asking questions and just trust us._I told her I was done discussing this with her and ended the conversation.
I have wondered since whether I should have agreed to the six-hour meeting just to understand their full game plan. To ask harder questions. To see how deep this goes. But honestly — six hours, after months of being slowly softened up, to hear something I already knew the answer to? My time is worth more than that. Sitting through more manipulation is not research. It is just more manipulation. I am fine with the call I made.
The Disappointing Part
The thing that bothered me the most was not the scam itself. It was the assumption behind it. Deepti knew what I had built. She had asked about my company, my numbers, my work. Besides, my company is incorporated as Private Limited, anyone under the sun can see our books and audit us. She had enough information to know I understand how business works. And yet she and her team still thought they could run this script on me and I would not see through it.They genuinely thought I was a fool.
Questionable college credentials. A Navy brooch worn like a costume. Two hours of emotional manipulation before money was even mentioned. No company name, no last names, nothing traceable. I cannot search for Rakshit from BITS Pilani. I cannot verify Madhusudan the retired Navy officer. That is not an accident — it is how they protect themselves. This was not just a scam. It was a condescending one. Built on the assumption that a person's trust, their old college friendships, their goodwill can all be weaponised against them.
I First Saw This in 2008
Here is something that surprised even me. Sitting across from Madhusudan, I felt a strong sense of having seen this before. The year was 2008. I was part of Karnataka's athletics team. One of our senior teammates invited the whole group to a seminar in Bangalore. Small hall. Serious atmosphere. We went out of respect for the senior. I walked out laughing. Back then it was simpler. They were selling FMCG products — soaps, health supplements, that sort of thing. Or plots of land on the outskirts of the city where nobody could check anything easily. The hall was modest. The people seemed ordinary. The whole thing felt clumsy and obvious.
I laughed, left, and cut off that senior completely. I did not expect to be sitting in a Starbucks nearly two decades later, watching the exact same scheme, just wearing a better suit. In 2008, it was basic products and a small room. In 2026, it is a "digital e-commerce platform," trips to South East Asia, fancy watches, and a retired Navy officer walking in like he owns the room. The core idea has not changed at all — pay to join, recruit others, earn from their recruitment. Only the packaging has improved. And this honestly irritates me more than anything else. By now, every educated person in India has heard of pyramid schemes. The internet is full of articles, YouTube videos, WhatsApp forwards warning about this exact thing. And yet here it is, still running in 2026, still finding new recruits, still booking tables at Starbucks.
The reason it still works is simple. The new version is designed to not look like what people imagine a scam looks like. A retired Navy officer does not look like a con artist. A Starbucks does not look like a seminar hall in 2008. "E-commerce platform with distribution rights" does not sound like selling soap door to door. The outfit is different. The trick is the same.
How This Scheme Actually Works - I did a lot of research on this!!
I won't name the company for legal reasons — search for "MLM e-commerce direct selling India" and you will find it. But let me explain how the money flows. You pay ₹4.25 lakhs. In return, you get membership, platform access, so-called distribution rights, and some physical products like watches, an air purifier, etc. These items that you "choose" from a catalogue. But here is the question. who else is buying these watches? Can you sell them to a stranger? What are they worth on the open market? The answer is nothing, because they have no open market. These products exist only inside the network. The products are there to make your entry fee look like a purchase. Without them, the whole thing would be openly illegal.
Your real job is to bring in more people. Every person you recruit pays their entry fee, and a portion comes to you. Their recruits do the same, and money keeps moving upward. People at the top — who joined early and have large networks below them — make money. People who join late lose it. That is not an opinion. That is how the mathematics of a pyramid works. The "e-commerce" label is just legal cover. The business is recruitment. And it cannot survive without new people constantly joining.
How to Spot This — And What to Do
If something like this lands in your life, here is what to watch for. The first thing you will notice is that they avoid naming the company. Any real business leads with who they are in the first five minutes. If someone is two hours into a pitch and still hasn't said the company name, that is not shyness, but a strategy to stop you from Googling anything before you commit.
Watch for lifestyle photos before any real information. Travel pictures, talk of passive income, "give your family a comfortable life" — all of this before a single product is mentioned. They are selling you a feeling, not a business. Check the credentials. A BITS Pilani graduate who can't recognise anyone from BITS. A Navy officer whose only proof is a brooch on a blazer. If you cannot verify a person's background with one or two simple questions, don't trust the background. And on that note, if you cannot Google the people who are asking you for lakhs of rupees, that is not an accident. No last names, no company name, nothing traceable. It is all by design.
Notice how the money works. You are not buying inventory. You are not setting up a shop. You are paying just to become a "member" and get "access." That is not how any real business works, ever. Feel the pressure they create. "Others are ready to take this spot." "You need to decide in 24 hours." Real opportunities do not vanish overnight. This urgency is engineered specifically to stop you from thinking clearly. Look at the products carefully. If the luxury watch they hand you has no brand name anyone recognises, no retail price, and no buyer anywhere outside this group, it is not a product. It is a prop to make your entry fee look like a purchase.
And finally, if your recruiter recently returned from a group trip to Sri Lanka, Malaysia or Singapore and immediately became very pushy about getting you to meet someone — ask yourself what that trip actually was. Because it almost certainly was not a business trip. Real businesses don't need two hours of emotional softening before they tell you what they do. They tell you their name, what they sell, and how the money works, upfront, in plain language, without building up to it like a dramatic reveal. If an old friend or college connection suddenly reappears after years of silence and starts talking about a "great opportunity" — slow down. Ask simple, direct questions. If the answers are always vague, always postponed, always just around the corner, you already have your answer.
I was not fooled. But I am disappointed in the people involved, and in a system that takes ordinary people, turns them into recruiters, puts them on flights to Sri Lanka for "motivation," and convinces them that this is success. Be careful out there.
Oh, my dad received a similar call from his old friend's younger brother, from Sri Lanka, around same time, explaining about an EXITING OPPORTUNITY. Perhaps he was making an hot call from the brainwashing session! My old man asked him to call me, as its the son who handles all the business! A story for another day ;-)