Meet Gurgaon based Rajan Gupta, accused to be Unicon Baba of Twitterverse

“Could this be Unicon Baba?,” I think to myself.

Short, fair, beefy, dressed in a grey t-shirt and a pair of denim, the alleged ‘Unicon Baba’ comes across as just your next door neighbour.

Am meeting Rajan Gupta, the beleaguered director of Ad monetisation at U2opia Mobile, who became an overnight talk of the town in India’s startup ecosystem, last week. It was after Vijay Anand, founder of a Chennai-based incubator, The Startup Centre, accused him of being the anonymous notorious Twitter handle -- Unicon Baba.

Even before I could perch myself atop a high wooden chair at a Gurgaon-based cafe, I'm thrown a question. He asks me if there's if he could be in trouble as a result of this episode.

For the uninitiated, the anonymous Twitter account Unicon Baba has been operating since a little over a year now and has been embroiled in multiple controversies, including reported legal actions by some entrepreneurs against the handle.

Gupta vehemently denies Anand’s claims that he owns the handle. His level of anxiety is palpable.

"Unicon Baba has not able to prove anything against anyone but has definitely affected a lot of people. Similarly (in this case) nothing has been proven but people take a lot of things on the face value," he tells me.

“I have been clarifying things to each person who has reached out (post Anand’s allegations of him operating the Twitter account),” he adds.

Last year, the Twitter troll Unicon Baba, which runs the handle @uni_con1, claimed that Jabong co-founder and ex-CEO Praveen Sinha made personal gains from business dealings at the company. According to media reports, an understandably angry Sinha filed a legal case against the Twitter account holder.

Baba's conflicts impacts Gupta

Being accused as Unicon Baba for Gupta means having slid into a direct conflict with the people affected by the anonymous handle's tweets. Besides Sinha, other CEOs who have come under fire in Twitterverse by Unicon Baba include Snapdeal’s co-founders Kunal Bahl, Rohit Bansal and InnerChef’s co-founder Rajesh Sawhney. There are many others.

A father to a two-year-old, Gupta, is a B.Tech from a Delhi-based college and now looks after ad monetisation at U2opia. His wife works in a power sector company with whom he hasn't shared anything about the social media controversy brewing against him in India’s’ Twitterverse.

"If I told her ... she would be worrying about it day and night. There's no point (in disclosing)…until she discovers it herself online or through a friend," says a worried Gupta.

Gupta shows me a selfie with Snapdeal's (Rohit) Bansal whom he met while raising funds for one of his startups.

While Bansal did not invest in his venture, according to Gupta, he was ‘supportive enough’ to spend some time. Gupta also said he was ‘very close’ to Rajesh Sawhney who mentored him during his startup days.

Gupta founded two start-ups -- BestDaam in 2010 and Zappka in 2014 before joining Gurgaon-based U2opia Mobile as a director of ad monetisation.

Now being accused as Unicon Baba, has created personal problems for Gupta.

"Rajesh Sawhney is a very very good friend of mine. He also helped in connecting me with people for employment. I look up to him for everything. Unicon (Baba) on the other hand has a different perception of him," Gupta explains.

"If I were Unicon Baba, I would have spared at least the people whom I knew. Why would I speak against people whom I admire?" he asks.

Did you call Sawhney after this (incident)? I ask.

"No I haven't. I will. But for now, the way, things have turned out, it is difficult for me to go back to him....In his mind, it could always be that I was the guy who has been trolling him on Twitter," he shares with me.

When Unicon Baba met Vijay Anand

It is lunch time. People at the cafe are grabbing the first seat they see. The ambience becomes noisy. I request Gupta if we could sit outside in the smoking zone under the Sun.

The unforgiving Gurgaon heat has ensured that the smoking area is emptier. Smokers seem to have vanished into thin air in the sultry heat. The alleged Unicon Baba politely obliges.

I ask him if he was approached by anyone who had been targeted by Unicon Baba?

"Not yet," he retorts. But Gupta is angry about his email id and picture being made public by Anand.

Also Read: Death of an anonymous Twitter handle - Till unmasking do us apart

It was last Thursday. Gupta had just landed in Dubai. As he connected his phone to the nearest available WiFi, his inbox started flooding with emails and text messages.

"I was totally confused. I had just arrived from Muscat and my entire day was packed," says Gupta.

Shortly, he realised that his email id and the picture was made public on the internet.

Gupta tells Moneycontrol that he started replying to emails from the Dubai airport itself clarifying that the episode was absurd. To his disappointment, some blogs even started publishing those emails.
Furious from attacks by Unicon Baba on social media, in Chennai, Anand had become determined to unmask the anonymous troll, earlier this month.

Opened my eye in @tokyo this morningsaw this masterstroke from @vijayanands. I have no doubts that he is real Chatur Ramalingam of 3idiots.

— Unicon Baba (@uni_con1) May 18, 2017

If I was Suvir of NVP my wife wud have thrown me to rehab for compulsive gamblers.

— Unicon Baba (@uni_con1) May 26, 2017

A few weeks ago, Anand went onto Twitter and tried to set the password of the Twitter handle Unicon Baba.

It led him to a masked email address created to set up the Twitter account. He zeroed in on that id scanning through the email addresses on which he sends newsletters. Anand also went to Gmail and tried to set the password for the Gmail id used by Baba. It led him to an email id with the following details gup******@gmail.com.

Moneycontrol reached out to Anand on the controversy.

"I sent Gupta an email and waited for his response. I exactly know what time he actually opened the email. I told him I will give you two hours to respond before I go public with this. Since there was no response, I basically went public (with Gupta’s email address and identity,” Anand tells me.

Did you ever contact Vijay Anand? I ask Gupta.

"I replied him stating that I was in Dubai and I would get back on Monday and that we should get on a call," Gupta tells me.

According to Gupta, Anand said he did not need to talk to him. "He was just so convinced that I was Unicon Baba," says Gupta.

Gupta knew Anand since 2007. They met at some event, being in the Indian startup circles. "I don't even remember him properly. But because of me being in his Linkedin connect, I am a part of his newsletter database too," he says.

He also clarifies, he never paid to get his newsletters.

But Anand seems convinced that Unicon Baba was somebody who had subscribed to his newsletters. “Attaching an email address to a Gmail address requires two-factor authentication and can only be done with there has been access to both accounts,” Anand puts forth his argument.

He went to his database and filtered the email id of Gupta, co-incidentally having the same initials.

"I expected him (Anand) to be a little more professional. He could have reached out to me and asked me for my (personal) information. I would have given him access to my emails. I have nothing to hide. I am an ordinary guy... not like somebody running a big funded startup," Gupta tells me.

On the other hand, when Moneycontrol reached out to the Twitter handle of Unicon Baba, he said he has met Anand multiple times in Chennai. "I know Vijay Anand very well I have met him multiple times when I was in Chennai for a year," the Twitter handle tells me.

Gupta now is also contemplating to send legal notices to everyone who published his email id or pictures. Anand is also contemplating the same.

What does your lawyer advise? I asked Gupta.

"As per my lawyers you cannot publish someone’s email id (without permission)...," the alleged Unicon Baba adds.

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priyanka.sahay@nw18.com

(Moneycontrol is refraining from using Gupta's picture or even linking the article to his social media accounts, as per his request)