Veena Kulkarni (4th from right in green shirt) last spoke to her husband Manmath at 8 am on August 25. (Express photo)Manmath Kulkarni, a 60-year-old IT entrepreneur based in Mumbai’s Goregaon East is anxiously awaiting news of his wife, who has been missing since Thursday morning after a group of trekkers — including several former colleagues from Oracle’s early days in India — went incommunicado near the Nepal-China border. The group of techie families were part of the larger group led by Dr Milind P Chitley, veteran mountaineer who is also reported missing in Nepal’s flash floods.Kulkarni’s wife, Veena (58), left Mumbai on the morning of August 23 on the 11 am flight to Kathmandu, travelling with fellow former iFlex Solutions employees Venkat Subramanyam and L Shankar, along with their spouses. Their group joined as part of the annual trek led by Chitley, included around 10 to 12 people, mostly husband-wife pairs who had worked together decades ago. Others included NRK Raman and his wife, V Shankar and wife and Padma Mahadevan.According to Kulkarni, the group reached Kathmandu on August 25 and set out early the next morning for Timure, arriving there by evening and checking into their hotel. Everything appeared normal through the following morning.“At 6 am they were still in the hotel. 8 am they had reached the Nepal-China border,” Kulkarni recounted. He had spoken to his wife around that time, when she mentioned the group was waiting for one member’s passport that he had forgotten in Kathmandu to be delivered before they could cross. “In another half an hour or 45 minutes, we should be crossing over,” she told him.Must Read | Nepal Flash Flood Live Updates: Death toll reaches 669, more than 2,400 missing, says Nepal Police“The conversation ended there. After that, I tried calling her at 9:45 am but I couldn’t get through,” Kulkarni said. It wasn’t until 3:30 in the afternoon, when his brother called asking if he had seen the news, that the family realised something was wrong. “Otherwise, we never had this thought that anything happened,” he said. “We don’t have any concrete information so far.”Kulkarni, who did not join the 14-day trek due to work commitments at his recently founded tech firm, said the entire 10-12 member group of former Oracle employees, along with Chitley and the rest of the 50 odd people remains unaccounted for. “From whatever we know so far, nobody has been located,” he said. The family filed a report with the Indian Embassy in Nepal on the first day and has been monitoring official websites for updates, but said reliable information remains scarce. “I don’t think anybody is still able to give any idea,” he said.Kulkarni, currently in Mumbai, said travelling to Kathmandu himself would likely not help given restricted access to the affected region. His 29-year-old daughter, Nidhi Kulkarni, who works at a law firm, is coping better than he is. His wife Veena, previously worked in software at a company originally called Kale Tech, later acquired by another company.Story continues below this adAs search efforts continue, Kulkarni said he remains hopeful that his wife and the rest of the missing group would be located. “ Lot of people are trying to get us information – cousins and friends- but since information is coming through only from very few sources, it’s difficult. I just hope there’s a breakthrough, and they’re all there, safe and sound.”