Pirate offers tech entrepreneur his own product

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For the owner of a software company, the unsavoury business of software piracy hit a little too close to home when he received a text message from a pirate offering to sell him a "cracked" version of his own software for a lower price.

Vinod Bellamkonda, the CEO of the Banashankari-based software company Bell-Tpo, said he was surprised to receive a forwarded text message from a client, revealing that an unknown individual was trying to sell pirated versions of the company's market analysis software to him.

"Going by the text message, it was apparent that the individual was passing himself off as the owner of the software," Bellamkonda said, adding that he immediately called the number behind the SMS.

"A person answered and I told him that what he was doing was wrong and illegal, and that he should immediately stop," he remembered. "The person was abrupt. He said: 'Prove that I am selling the software and then we will see what the consequences are'."

Those consequences came to a head when police tracked down the individual behind the text messages, Pavitra Simha M, 38, of Chennai, and booked him under the Information Technology Act in October. The arrest was announced on Wednesday.

Although Bellamkonda was unwilling to reveal the extent of the damage caused by the piracy, he said that the incident had caused a notable decline to Bel-tpo's sales.

A study published by the Business Software Alliance last year found that while the installation rates of pirated software in India had declined from 63% in 2011 to 56% in 2017, the commercial value of unlicensed software still amounted to $2,474 million per annum — only slightly reduced from $2,930 in 2011.

K S Vishwanathan, vice-president (industry initiatives) Nasscom, said that piracy in Bengaluru was probably the lowest in the country, owing to high rates of compliance and ethical users of software affiliated with Nasscom.

Bel-tpo's affected software are the Bell Market Profile Pro, which carries a price tag of Rs 16,750, and the Bell Order Flow Pro which sells for Rs 54,000. Both software are geared towards the active trading community "to help traders visualise happenings in the market," according to the company website.