After two years out of the workforce and months of job searching, 27-year-old Srishti thought she had finally caught a break when a hiring consultant called her in September.
The role was with QuantumSoft, an IT firm with little recall in Pune’s tech circles. But these were desperate times. Srishti, who asked not to use her real name to protect her identity, was asked to pay a fee to secure a Rs 6 lakh annual package, with an option to “upgrade” to Rs 11 lakh for a higher payment.
“I had to pay Rs 2.5 lakh for a Rs 6 LPA (lakh per annum) package, and I had the option to earn Rs 11 LPA by increasing the payment to Rs 3.25 lakh. I chose the latter, paying Rs 2.75 lakh as the first instalment and planning to clear the rest once I start drawing my salary,” she told Moneycontrol.
She joined in October after receiving her offer letter and was assigned a training course. She received her first salary a month later – and that turned out to be the last payment from the firm, despite monthly payslips continuing to be generated.
Frustrated, she reached out to the hiring consultant in January seeking a full refund. She said she was told to resign immediately to qualify for a refund. So far, the consultant has returned about Rs 1.45 lakh. The remaining amount remains unpaid.
Like Srishti, hundreds of IT professionals in Pune have filed complaints against several small technology firms and consultants, alleging they were asked to pay hefty fees for jobs that either did not materialise or failed to deliver promised salaries.
The cases, now under police investigation, have exposed an alleged pattern of pay-for-work hiring and unpaid wages, leaving many workers with invalid experience records and financial losses.
A similar story played out for 25-year-old Dhruv from Maharashtra’s Yavatmal, a 2022 graduate who struggled to find work for more than two years. When the QuantumSoft offer came in October 2025, Dhruv, who requested his real name not be revealed, felt like it was a long-awaited break.
“The hiring consultant found me on a job search portal I had signed up for. I had to pay around Rs 3 lakh for a Rs 6 LPA package. I managed to source the money from relatives and through some loans, ” he said.
Dhruv and Srishti are among the 100 employees who have filed complaints against QuantumSoft at Pune’s Viman Nagar police station, even as 300 more employees prepare to lodge complaints soon.
At the other end of Pune, another IT company, Flynaut SaaS, is facing over 354 FIRs at Hinjewadi police station on similar charges. More than 600 employees were affected overall and are currently filing additional complaints. Moneycontrol reviewed copies of FIRs and complaint documents.
Meanwhile, at the Bavdhan police station, sources said DataTech Labs had cleared salaries for at least five of the complainants and sought time to pay the remaining 60 current and former employees, who are awaiting their dues.
Police are investigating the allegations, and no final conclusions have been reached.
While these three companies face investigation and complaints, at least 10 IT firms in Pune have been identified as being involved in similar alleged practices, according to the Forum of IT Employees (FITE).
Modus operandi
The founders and CEOs of QuantumSoft Technologies and Flynaut SaaS are currently in judicial custody as the police investigate their activities.
A common thread has emerged. Both companies had close to 900-1000 employees hired through consultants that charged hefty fees ranging from Rs 1.5 lakh to 3.5 lakh from the joiners and split the amount with the firms’ management.
There are at least 30 such individual hiring consultants and consulting firms involved, allegedly working with these IT companies, according to FITE. A document listing some of these consultants specifically in the QuantumSoft case was submitted at the Viman Nagar police station by FITE last week, a copy of which was accessed by Moneycontrol.
The job seekers targeted were largely graduates from the 2022-24 batches from small towns across Maharashtra, including Yavatmal, Amravati, Nagpur and Ahmednagar. Many of them, with degrees in BSc IT, Master of Computer Applications (MCA) or engineering, had struggled to secure placements.
But not all were freshers. Experienced IT professionals with career breaks were also targeted. The consultants would either reach out through job search portals or through referrals from their friends.
“Consultants involved in this nexus, too, should be exposed. At least 30 such consultants are involved. They are very well aware of the entire scam. They should have been arrested, and their money trail needs to be tracked,” Pavanjit Mane, President of the IT employees union FITE, said.
“I don’t think these consultants are technically competent to place anyone anywhere. They don’t have the market reputation to pitch to a bigger company. They will continue to exploit job seekers,” he said.
A fresher MCA graduate who joined Flynaut in January 2025 said he was “given a discount” and charged about Rs 1.9 lakh for a Rs 4 LPA package, as he went through a friend’s referral who had joined a month before him. Other joinees had to pay Rs. 2.5 lakh for the same annual pay package.
“I was called for an interview with 10-12 other candidates by Rohan Ambulkar around November 2024. The group interview seemed fake, as he barely asked any technical questions and even skipped some of the candidates. But ultimately offered jobs to everyone, asking us to pay the amount depending on the salary package,” the 25-year-old fresher told Moneycontrol.
Ambulkar, a resident of Nagpur, is one of the directors of Flynaut. He is currently in the custody of Hinjewadi police along with CEO Upesh Patil, the FIR copy said.
After joining in January 2025, the fresher underwent two months of training, earning about Rs 15,000 a month, before receiving a full salary of Rs 30,000 in March. He was then required to clear a series of tests to be assigned to projects, a pattern that was similar to practices at established IT firms.
But Flynaut kept failing most employees who appeared for these tests and did not allocate any actual projects to anyone, the fresher claimed. Ultimately, he stopped getting paid a salary from April onwards. After a few months of waiting, several employees reached out to HR and senior managers by phone and email, but their communications were blocked.
The last straw was when the company started another round of tests around October-November 2025, allegedly citing a project in which Tech Mahindra was outsourcing employees from Flynaut. While this gave some hope to the stuck employees, nothing really materialised for anyone.
FITE’s Mane said even the trainers had just one to two years of experience and appeared unaware of the alleged fraudulent activities.
As things stand, hundreds of IT employees are staring at uncertain futures, as their months, and in some cases, over a year of work experience, become invalid while they wait to get at least their money refunded.
Many of the employees Moneycontrol spoke to said they had to take loans, sell gold, or ask their families and relatives to pay the amounts charged by consultants to secure jobs.
What were the wrongdoings?
The IT companies allegedly relied on fees collected from new joiners, according to employees and people familiar with the investigation. Multiple employees and other sources alleged that the companies lacked active projects and that these funds were used for expenses such as operations and other costs.
While provident fund accounts were created, the companies did not deposit funds into them, employees alleged. Health insurance promised in the offer letters was also not provided, employees said.
All three companies in question, QuantumSoft, Flynaut and DataTech Labs, were started during the Covid years, between 2021 and 2023.
Nikhileshwar Kshirsagar, Founder and CEO of QuantumSoft Technologies, has been under arrest for four months now. Sources privy to the investigation said he was hiring in bulk, hoping to have talent ready whenever he wins a project.
“Our headcount actually went up from 200 to close to 1,000 within a month or two at the end of 2025,” said one of the employees at the company.
Employees were also allegedly being terminated for enquiring about their pay and health insurance. “One of our colleagues went to discuss a health insurance policy as his mother needed cancer treatment, and he was immediately terminated,” the employee cited above said.
Based on the more than 100 FIRs filed so far, complainants allege that the company collected as much as Rs 1 crore through their pay-for-work model.
Moneycontrol tried to call QuantumSoft for comment, but did not receive a response. Its website is currently not functional, and the phone number listed was unreachable.
Attempts were also made to get in touch with Ramprasad Kshirsagar, Nikhileshwar’s elder brother. He declined to comment, saying he was not related to the company. He couldn’t share an alternate email id or contact number to reach the company.
Investigations underway, more to come out
Hrushikesh Ghadge, police inspector and investigating officer in the Flynaut case at Hinjewadi police station, said that CEO Patil and director Ambulkar have been in custody for nearly eight months now.
The 354-plus complaints registered against the firm amounted to about Rs. 6 crore in payments made by employees. Patil’s wife, Punam Upesh Patil, is listed as the director of the company, but was granted arrest protection by the court.
“We found that this company had no money in its account. Whatever was earned through the newly joined employees was used for buying jewellery, cars and flats. Though they did show some projects in the pipeline at the time of arrest, that were yet to generate revenue for them,” Ghadge told Moneycontrol.
He added, “What’s wrong is these companies charging money from job seekers to provide them employment. We are further investigating the case.”
Multiple attempts by Moneycontrol to reach Flynaut at their available phone number were unsuccessful. The company’s official website has been taken down.
According to people familiar with the matter, DataTech Lab’s CEO, Amit Andre, has not been arrested after presenting details of the company’s ongoing projects. The company also released salaries to some employees who had filed complaints.
Yet, over 60 other employees still await their clearances, sources said.
“DataTech Labs hadn’t paid us salaries for four to six months, citing financial issues. Then they suddenly started terminating people asking for salaries. That created some fear among the other employees,” a couple of former employees said.
The employees said, “People who were quitting voluntarily weren’t given experience letters. The company would put allegations of data breach against them. Most of the hires were freshers, and they didn’t even have enough money for food due to the delays.”
Even a former HR from the company had to file a police complaint to get their salary dues settled, multiple sources said.
The employees had written to the labour commissioner to raise their concerns and seek a resolution.
Moneycontrol had made several attempts to reach Bavdhan police station in Pune where the FIRs were registered. The concerned investigating officer was unavailable to comment until the time of publishing.
DataTech Labs’ CEO Andre denied the allegations and claims made by the employees.
“These allegations are, in our view, baseless, biased, and presented with an intention to malign the reputation of The DataTech Labs Inc. and to personally and professionally harass us. As an organisation, we remain committed to ethical conduct, due process, and full legal compliance in all our operational, employment, and business matters,” he said.
Andre said the claims are “trial by social media”, calling out salary backlogs, employee counts, terminations, and other allegations as “factually incorrect, exaggerated, or intentionally misrepresented.”
He added that for “genuine concerns”, he has urged individuals to schedule appointments and resolve matters through lawful processes. Andre also denied terminating employees for asking about salaries or employees quitting being denied exit documents.
“I would again state that these are sweeping and unverified allegations…No organisation can be expected to ignore serious matters such as NDA breach, misconduct, asset loss, source code theft, or direct damage to the company’s business interests,” he said.
DataTech Labs currently has 200 professionals working in India, and another 50 based outside the country. Andre said the company continues to expand footprint across AI, data engineering, enterprise transformation, and industry-specific digital solutions.
According to Nikhil Walke, Deputy Labour Commissioner of Pune, the fake job cases are largely criminal and come under the police department’s purview.
“We will look into any violation of labour laws and service conditions related issues in these cases once further details come out in the police investigation. We have already issued press releases and written letters to concerned authorities to notify them regarding these IT companies,” he told Moneycontrol.
Bleak future prospects, lost opportunities
As these employees await justice, travelling from their hometowns to Pune to file complaints, gathering information, running between police stations to get updates, many want to move on from this chapter of their lives and seek newer opportunities.
But, it has been harder than they could have imagined.
Beyond the experience gap and the shadow of working with companies under police investigation, these employees are fighting another battle – trying to delink their provident fund (PF) accounts from their current employers.
An employee from QuantumSoft recently secured a role at a tier-I IT firm, but her onboarding has been held up as an inactive provident fund account from her current employer has raised concerns during background verification.
Reaching out to the company for assistance hasn’t been very helpful.
“We have asked the employees to share their UAN numbers. We will be sending our person to the EPFO Akola office, where QuantumSoft’s PF accounts were created, to look into the matter and get it sorted,” Govind Jadhav, police inspector and investigating officer in the QuantumSoft case at Viman Nagar police station, told Moneycontrol.
Employees getting lured into such jobs also reflects the state of the larger IT services industry in the country. As tier-I IT companies have cut down on bulk hiring in recent years, freshers, especially those from smaller towns and cities in the 2022-2025 batches, have been unable to secure jobs.
“Major tech companies like TCS, Infosys and Wipro have reduced hiring in the last few years. This has resulted in a huge number of freshers who would get into top companies now joining smaller companies, and those who used to join the smaller companies have absolutely no options,” said Mane.
He added, “Reduction of hiring in top companies has definitely resulted in a huge number of freshers being available in the market.”
Government takes swift approach
What’s been interesting in this case is the Maharashtra government’s intervention, taking cognisance of the incidents.
Earlier this month, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis issued a directive to form a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe into the Flynaut SaaS case after the matter was raised in the state assembly by MLA Shankar Jagtap.
The State government will also soon set up a separate tribunal for grievances flagged by IT sector employees.
The IT employee union in Pune is hoping that SITs will be set up for other companies as well.
“The alleged scams should be investigated under an SIT (Special Investigation Team). Relevant details and supporting information have already been shared by us,” said Prashant Pandit, Secretary, FITE.