The ongoing dispute between Quick Heal Technologies, a Pune based IT security solutions company and its CD replication partner Softalk Technologies, has reached to a stage where Softalk Technologies has issued company's closure legal notice to Quick Heal, under section 434 of Company Act 1956. Softalk has taken this move since Quick Heal failed to pay the dues for the material and services provided by Softalk Technologies for its Baddi unit.

Speaking to The DQ Week, Umesh Gupta, director, Softalk Technologies candidly said, "We sent this legal demand cum winding up notice to Quick Heal on December 18, under section 434 read with 433 & 439 of the Companies Act 1956. If Quick Heal Technologies does not respond to us within 30 days time, we will be forced to approach courts for filing the Quick Heal wind up and company closure as per the law provisions."

Earlier, Softalk issued a notice of a total due of Rs 16 crore on which Quick Heal is neither responding nor paying anything. The company ignored various payment reminders which lead Softalk in a bad financial shape and hampered the complete operations of the company.

Softalk claims, that under Company Law Act, if a company fails to pay the liability than it can be winded up by the intervention of courts. Under this provision, Softalk's lawyers issued notices to Quick Heal.

When The DQ Week contacted Kailash Katkar, founder and CEO, Quick Heal Technologies on this matter, he confirmed, "We are in receipt of a notice from Softalk for recovery of unsubstantiated dues and a threat for winding up u/s 433 (e) of the Company's Act 1956. The same has been referred to our legal counsels and will not be able to comment on the same. Our stand vis-a-vis Softalk is very firm and clear, all the charges alleged by Softalk are false, erroneous and baseless, with a malafide intent to demean and malign the image of Quick Heal. We would not like to comment on these allegations as the matter is subjudice."

It is to be noted that Softalk started its alliance with Quick Heal in February 2011, for the manufacturing of Compact CDs, replicating and package the software for Quick Heal, but due to the payment disputes, Softalk sent legal notice for winding up the company and for the payment of dues pending towards the company.

Meanwhile there has been reports of raids at Quick Heal offices and Softalk Technologies factories in Baddi and Noida by Directorate General of Central Excise Intelligence (DGCEI) in the month of September, 2012.

When asked about these raids, Katkar informed, "There were no raids at our offices. There was an inspection by the DGCEI Revenue Officer on September14, 2012 at Pune and Parwanoo office of Quick Heal. It has been over 120 days since the DGCEI surveyed our offices. We have co-operated with them in providing them all the documentations required by them for a fair investigation in the month of September 2012. As on date we have not received any demand or notices from the departments for depositing taxes. Lastly due to our large and loyal channel base and with the huge support of our partners and customers and their trust in what Quick Heal stands for in terms of clean business ethics of high integrity, there hasn't been any impact on either the production or the sale of QH products across the country."

Commenting on the non payment issue of Softalk, Katkar maintained his stand and said, "Softalk is on a mission to defame and deride the goodwill and credibility that Quick Heal has established over these years. We faced quality issues with Softalk and we received complaints from partners and customers about scratches on CDs, software loading problems and also about wrong packaging, 1-user license going into a 3-user license pack, etc. We had informed Softalk about the same who had then assured us that such complaints won't arise in future. However, we took on-board more CD manufacturers including Jupiter and IPSoft who also have units in Himachal Pradesh to mitigate the supply and quality issues faced by us. We assume that Softalk didn't like this change and gradually we moved our entire production to the other two vendors. Therefore, the claims made by Softalk are erroneous and baseless and are not substantiated with accurate audited data. The same shall be proved with the appropriate court of law."

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