The office looked like a prospering tech start-up in a gleaming complex in Hinjewadi Phase 2 in Pune. A dedicated HR team, a training department, and polished offer letters with the company letterhead. A wall of colourful product logos that promised an ambitious ecosystem of apps, from a news platform to a dairy delivery service to a taxi-hailing app.For hundreds of young engineering graduates from across Maharashtra, like from Nashik, Yavatmal, Jalgaon, and also from Pune’s most reputed colleges, ThynkTech India OPC Pvt Ltd seemed exactly like the break they had been waiting for until it wasn’t.On April 22, when IT employees and interns arrived at the office, they were shocked to find the doors sealed. Taped to the glass entrance was a notice from the property owner, demanding payment of unpaid rent, maintenance charges, and electricity bills. The CEO, Harshal Thakre, was unreachable.Dream that was soldThynkTech India was registered in Noida but operated a divisional branch out of Hinjewadi, Pune. It launched around April 2025 and quickly established a presence on college campuses, conducting placement drives at well-known institutions, some even affiliated with Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU), including AISSMS, Bharati Vidyapeeth College of Engineering (Lavale), D Y Patil University, Pimpri Chinchwad College of Engineering, and ISBM College of Engineering, among others. That campus presence gave the company credibility.Also Read | Global firms’ AI centres are reshaping Indian IT industry, but who has the top jobs?“We thought that if reputed colleges are allowing ThynkTech for campus placements, they must have done a background check,” said one intern, a 25-year-old electronics engineering graduate from Nashik who spoke to The Indian Express. “So we believed it was a genuine company.”The company recruited for multiple technical profiles like Full Stack Developers, AI-ML Developers, Backend Developers (Spring Boot), Python Developers, Software Testers, and Flutter Developers. Candidates who cleared the interview received an offer letter for the role of ‘Associate Software Engineer and Internship Training’.The letter promised a monthly stipend of Rs 15,000 during the advanced training period and a confirmed job with a salary of Rs 5.5 lakh per annum upon successful completion. There was one more condition: pay a security deposit of Rs 15,000 before receiving the offer letter. In return, they would be given a laptop.Story continues below this ad“The interview was conducted either offline at their office or online. They had four offices in the same complex, an HR team, a training team; everything looked legitimate,” the intern recalls. “And they were giving Dell laptops. That removed any doubt I had.”“The first month of advanced training was not productive at all,” the intern said. “We would come to the office and just sit listening to instructions. One week passed doing nothing; the next week we practiced some basic software tasks. We were asked to complete one technology stack in about ten days, but it didn’t feel like real work.”Also Read | Pune Inc | The Gen Z students from COEP taking on India’s biomass fuel supply challengeIn March 2026, a major red flag appeared. “They told us there was an issue with the third-party agency that had supplied the laptops, and that we needed to return ours by the end of March,” the intern said. “They promised new ones in two to three days. Around 70 to 80 per cent of us returned our laptops. We never got them back.”“Everybody panicked,” the intern said. “We rushed to the office, only to find it was sealed. The rent notice was on the door.”Sealed doors, bounced chequesStory continues below this adThe notice taped to the office door, dated April 20, was from the property owner. It cited non-payment of rent since March, unpaid maintenance charges, and unpaid electricity bills. The company’s entry was barred until dues were cleared.The permanent staff, HR heads, and training heads were themselves in the dark. They had not received salaries since January. Around 30 interns formally complained to Hinjewadi Police Station and the Labour Commissioner’s office.Thakre resurfaced briefly at the Zoom meeting. He held an online meeting and assured all dues, including security deposits, would be cleared by cheque between April 27 and May 5. However, the cheques bounced. Thakre then stopped answering calls entirely.Hinjewadi police registered a case under Sections 316 (criminal breach of trust) and 318 (cheating) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) against Thakare, ThynkTech’s training and development head, and its HR head. On Tuesday, police detained Thakare from Nashik.‘We have no safety net’Story continues below this adFor many of the affected interns, the loss is not merely financial. Several had travelled to Pune from smaller towns of the state drawn by the dream of landing an IT job in the city that markets itself as the state’s ‘Silicon Valley’.“Several youngsters from humble backgrounds and sole breadwinners in their families had joined, hoping to start a career,” the intern says. “Now they are left with a traumatising experience, not just interns, but senior employees too.” The total count stands at nearly 700 people rendered jobless without notice.“We were promised course completion certificates. Those never came either,” he says. “Now I am worried: if I mention ThynkTech on my resume, will any company even consider me? The brief experience here cannot be counted, and we are left with nothing.”For now, he is surviving on savings from a previous job, spending his days visiting companies and searching for new opportunities.Story continues below this ad“Our demand is that strict action must be taken against the wrongdoers, and all pending payments must be cleared immediately,” the intern said.