QuestNet Readies to Redefine its Future
         
MEDIA COVERAGE - Article taken from News Today, India, 2009
K BALAKUMAR | Wed, 02 Sep, 2009

When Questnet, the direct selling company, was set up in 1998, it had the tagline ‘Redefining Your Future’. It was no more than the typical catchy cliche that coprorates are prone to pick up to give off the impression of being urban and useful. But in its 11th year of operations now, Questnet may do well to rephrase the line for its own inspiration. 

Caught in a skein of staggering events over which it claims it had no control, Questnet urgently needs to ‘redefine its own future’. Especially in these parts.

As it happens, it is what the bustling and bouncing J R Mayer, the company’s relatively young managing director, is setting out to do in right earnest.

Sitting in his plush office in Hong Kong, overlooking the calm South China Sea and a panoramic view of the business district of the island, he speaks with no apparent bitterness over the happenings over the last sixteen months, primarily in Tamilnadu where the company’s staff and representatives were arrested and the offices sealed on allegations of cheating.

It seems as if the broad and accommodative vista outside his window has shaped his perspective and plans. Mayer and the other directors of the company, though hurt by the complex turn of events in Tamilnadu, are now focussed on the bigger picture of providing more impetus to the affairs of the company across many markets.

The company, which is generally known as the gold coin company (generically referred to as Goldquest) in these parts, has a broad-based portfolio of services and products. Questnet deals, among others, with nutritional, home care, personal care, communications, energy products. Luxury and collectibles, led by Bernhard H Mayer brand of watches, time-share products, accessories (fragrances, pens, travel gear) are the other items of Questnet. The coins and medallions, something which landed the company in trouble, continue to be part of the list.

‘Wellness products is one of our main focus areas now,’ Mayer says as he runs through entire catalogue of products for the benefit of Indian journalists who were taken on a trip to the company’s headquarters here.
The year 2009 has seen the company roll out new products and also increase it worldwide sales force (it calls them as IRs —Independent Representatives) by several notches.

Mayer and other directors reel out impressive statistics, expansive statements to drive home the point that the health of the direct selling industry is pink and the future of Questnet is rosy. But tucked tangibly in the loops of their words is their operations in India, something which seems to be in a limbo for the last many months.

‘India is an important market for us,’ Mayer says. ‘We are keen on it,’ he adds. But how? With their operations in tatters and a slew of cases still to be fought in the courts, Questnet has an arduous mountain to climb in India.

Zaheer K Merchant, the company’s Director for Company Affairs, is the man who handles the legal matters of Questnet In India. He is still at a loss to explain as to what the authorities found wrong in their operations.

He and Kuna Senathirajah (Director, Investment Management) claim that the charges against the company are not specific. The burden of their words is that the company’s predicament is the classical case of ‘more sinned against than sinning’.

‘We’re not running away. We are fighting it every inch in the courts,’ Zaheer says and points to a couple of legal victories achieved in recent times. All the people arrested from the company are out on bail and a few other orders in favour of the company are still to be carried out by the police. Why? Zaheer again doesn’t have the answers. His words suggest that some unknown forces are working against the company and some strange politics (very typical to Tamilnadu) may also be the reason. ‘We have been politically naive,’ concedes Kuna. ‘But, we are determined to stay on course. We are ready for the long haul’.

As Mayer and his men plot a new future for Questnet in India, the direct selling company’s biggest challenge as yet has just begun: Re-selling itself into the minds of people, that is.