The company name is: SpeakAsia Online Pte Ltd.
formerly known as : Haren Technology Pte. Ltd.
formerly known as: PAN Automotives Pte. Ltd.

Add caption

(Compliance rating for this company is Non Compliant currently)

Prior to this name they were operating under:

HAREN VENTURES PTE. LTD.
f.k.a HAREN AUTO PARTS PTE. LTD.
f.k.a HAREN MULTICONSULT TRADE SERVICES PTE. LTD.


Source: www.psi.gov.sg

I asked one of my CA friend that how frequently a company change it names and he said its very less and not done so frequently. There are 2 more companies with the same name whose status is either Cancelled or Terminated and again they keep changing their company name:

HAREN AUTO & HEAVY EQUIPMENTS
f.k.a HAREN AUTOMOTIVES & COMPONENTS

And

HAREN MULTICONSULT TRADE SERVICES

And there is a defunct website too: http://www.hmtservices.com/ where we can find the products they were dealing before starting this business which is no where related to online surveys or dotcoms. Check out the page http://www.hmtservices.com/sparts.htm (probably they didnt had an active webmaster or the designer left work half complete due to several reasons)

Screenshots:





b) When doing little more research on the address of the company the same address is used for different companies. A simple Google can throw a few names which I am listing below. Some of the companies having the same address are:

Valves.Com Pte Ltd
http://imageshack.us/m/573/8770/valves.jpg

SBS Consulting Pte. Ltd.
http://imageshack.us/m/805/5417/sbsgroup.jpg
http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/3762/unledrh.jpg ---> thanks metiz for the image



c) The company has a franchisee model so at the face of it you are not paying anything directly to the company "Speak Asia" and it goes in the name of the franchise (bank account) and who further pass that money to someone in Mumbai and all get to keep a certain % out of it. If its such a big company they should provide an option to pay online through credit card directly to them instead of making so many layers of people accepting payments on companies behalf and would have helped them with instant signups.

d) If you watch YouTube for their Torch Bearers 2011 meet they are talking about opening a TV Channel by August 2011. Very nice and ambitious plan but doesnt it require a lot of regulatory processes and time and huge "money". But the ground reality is that they dont have a single registered office in India. There are claims that it will be open in May 2011 in Mumbai.

e) I found it amusing that they were using a hosted software at SurveyMonkey as their survey tool and only recently purchased Novi Survey. If its an established proven business with multi million dollars in revenue they should have built the survey system completely inhouse on which their entire business model works.

f) They claim they are established in Singapore / Malaysia / Indonesia but after doing a lot of research I didnt find enough evidence that proves that they are getting enough traffic from any of these countries to prove their claim. They are mainly in India and Bangladesh only

Speak Asia- Basic Knowledge

Well a few months back a friend of mine approached me to become a part of some Survey company who is paying INR 1000 per 2 online surveys (takes 20mins) and one had to invest INR 11000 upfront. Being on the internet for more then 12 years now from the face of it looked to me as some scam as who in the world will pay Rs.1000 (thats around 25$) for some 20 mins that too for a survey. That time I didnt even cared to ask about the name of the company.

Recently it again caught my attention by seeing the "Speak Asia" ads frequently in middle of IPL. I am sure you all have also seen Speak Asia advertisement how its now easy to make money online by filling surveys and the whole family is happy. So the deal seems to be getting more sweeter by the day for everyone joining in and they are not only making money for the participants, and for themselves too to buy advertising spots in IPL matches and also run a few TVC kind of ads on Imagine TV where the anchor is Rakshanda Khan.



.

The funny part was that the only qualification you need is that you should be above 18 year old and should know English + basic internet to browse. You dont have to do anything except filling surveys. If you want to make more money you can either sponsor someone or get a few friends of yours under you and make some % of their earnings too. A typical multi-level-marketing scheme where the more you climb higher the ladder you earn more.

It may be a marketing strategy to get more people signed up and that is absolutely fine. But they are all joining in joining in to make money from filling surveys and not for the "E-Zine" that the company says that they are selling as subscription. Honestly speaking the e-zine is not worth anything.

But the basic thing that I was still not clear was that does survey pays that well and I asked so few marketing and research experts and all said that the pricing is too steep to sustain. There are FMCG companies which does researches from time to time for their different products but they also not spending that much and the ones who pays premium (not anything in range of what Speak Asia pays) also seeks people to meet certain qualification like an investor or some academic qualification etc.

So that made me suspicious to dig further: