The Black Hat Pattern: A Look at Mr. Pandhare’s HealthTech Startup Business. I’m sharing some insights into how business groups like TIE operate.

Background

I went to TIE’s Conference in Pune around February 2025.

The event cost was about 7,000 to 8,000 rupees, and if you booked the conference ticket, you could get a membership for an additional 2,000 rupees.

However, that paid membership didn’t really offer any benefits because you still had to pay for each event, but you did get a discount.

So, you only got a discount on paid events, and then you started receiving an email newsletter for free. They have a members group on Zoho, but it seems no one uses it. Instead, they have an active WhatsApp group with multiple subgroups for each domain and industry.

The Story

Let’s get back to Mr. Pandhare, the young entrepreneur who started from humble beginnings.

I was browsing through the group notifications, and there he was, sharing that he had an extra LinkedIn Premium offer code he’d purchased for his employees, but it was more than he needed.

So, he messaged the group, inviting anyone to reach out so he could share the code with them. The cool thing is, there was no extra charge to LinkedIn itself—it was just an offer code.

I messaged him, suggesting he could share it with me since the code offered trials. That’s what I gathered from his message.

Here are a few things to keep in mind:

1. He has employees, so he needs to pay them.
2. His company is so successful that Pandhare bought LinkedIn’s offer code for them.
3. He’s so generous that he wants to share an extra one with the group.
4. He doesn’t mention that he’s selling the offer code to the public.

I looked at his LinkedIn profile, and it seemed he was involved in HealthTech, creating videos about nutrition. Then, I noticed his Instagram profile, which showed he was doing yoga.

He messaged me the code I gave him for the offer. LinkedIn didn’t ask for payment, and Pandhare didn’t ask for payment before sharing the code.

So, now I’m a LinkedIn Premium user.

The next hour, the Great Entrepreneur Legend started calling me several times, asking for money. It was funny how he started abusing and questioning my integrity and trust. And it was even funnier because he told me that if I was an entrepreneur, I shouldn’t break his trust.

So, I told him I wasn’t going to pay him anything because it wasn’t discussed at all.

I shared my experience on the group and let the admin know.

Now, his friends are reaching out, saying I should pay him immediately or its will not be good for me being on same WhatsApp group.

In our chat with the admin, I explained them the situation the told scams like this do happen online, but I also pointed out that as an admin, you should have checked the person before adding them to the group.

Once I shared the whole story on the group, it was funny to see the kid, Pandhare, get excited and start telling me he’d see it because he had all the screenshots and audio recordings of our conversations and planned to sue me.

I told him, “Okay, you can do that. Once I get a legal document or paper, we can continue from there.”

The Aftermath

In the meantime, I stopped responding to him. After three days, he started begging for money, and he told me he had come to Pune from a village with a poor family background. He needed that money to survive.

Now, here’s a questions that popped into my head:

1. If he’s so struggling and living alone, how did he manage to get extra offer codes for his employees? Or is that just a tall tale?
2. Or is selling offer codes under the table his way of making extra money, and then he starts extorting people to get it back, or even threatening random people in court?
3. I was wondering if screenshots or audio recordings really hold up in court when it comes to winning cases.
4. After digging into his profile online, I found out that the Maharashtra Government itself funded him. So, he probably has some free cash flow, unless he’s borrowing from the government.
5. It feels like he’s living in a fantasy world, thinking he can scam people and get away with it, like Byju’s and PayTM.

I waited a week to see if I’d get a legal notice for not paying 4,000 rupees to this Pune-based entrepreneur, Pandhare. But nothing came, so he started sending messages of apology and started begging for money.

Thinking he might have realized his mistake and was apologizing a lot, I paid him the money.

I also let the admin know what was happening.

Result

Now, after about three or four months, Mr. Pandhare posted again that he has extra LinkedIn offer codes and invites anyone interested to contact him.

This just shows how desperate he is for money, trying to get rich, or maybe even committing fraud.

Steal, fake it, or crook it, or make it…

Thanks and Regards
Mandar Apte