Kolkata operations of US software firm face closure

KOLKATA: A US-based software manufacturer Circar Consulting has filed a police complaint alleging theft of its source code by an employee at its Salt Lake office here and said the local operations may have to be shut down.

The firm's President and CEO of Circar Consulting Amit Sarkar also wrote a letter to West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee regarding the theft of the source code of its cloud-based software 'xteamup'.

Sarkar said the flagship product had the potential to generate USD 500 million of revenue for the company, according to a release issued by the company.

He said an FIR was lodged with the Salt Lake police station in connection with the theft.

He claimed that the product had been approved by Google and listed on the Google apps market place with a revenue sharing arrangement.

Sarkar feared that any person in possession of the source code could clone the product and market it under new a brand.

Unless the person was apprehended and the computers on which the source code was installed were seized, the company would suffer a tremendous loss and local operations would have to be shut down, he added.

No immediate reaction was available from the state government.