SEBI v. Zodiac Solutions (bulk SMS stock tips, Ejecta Marketing, 2022)

Judgment entered

✓ Checked against the primary document on October 9, 2026. The library's summary, tags and figures for this record were compared with the regulator's own document by an AI model (Claude) following written instructions, in a single reading of the order; an independent second reading of 60 SEBI records agreed on every field for 56, the four misses being penalty amounts; a later sample of 50 of the SEBI records added on 9 October agreed on every field for 46. No lawyer has reviewed them. A checked record can still contain errors, and checked does not mean endorsed. See how we check records or report a correction.

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A SEBI adjudicating officer fined a Gujarat bulk-SMS business Rs 8 lakh in July 2022 for sending buy-recommendation text messages in Ejecta Marketing shares in May 2018 and for ignoring SEBI's information requests. The order was made without any reply or appearance from the noticee.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

—

Alleged gain

—

Penalty as published

800k INR

A dash means the release did not state a figure we could extract, not that the figure is zero. Penalty and disgorgement are stored separately so aggregates across the library do not double-count the same dollars. This regulator states penalties in INR. The figure is recorded as published and is not converted, so it does not appear in the USD totals or medians used elsewhere on this site.

What is alleged to have happened

A SEBI adjudicating officer in Mumbai decided this matter on 29 July 2022. The sole noticee is Zodiac Solutions, a proprietorship of Pratipal Singh Zala, which the order identifies as the sender of a bulk SMS header used to push Ejecta Marketing Limited, a BSE-listed company.

SEBI's investigation began after a surge in trading volume in Ejecta shares. It found that about 96 per cent of the volume in the April to June 2018 window fell on 14 and 15 May 2018, the two days on which text messages urged recipients to buy the stock at a quoted price with a target and stop-loss. SEBI suspected that the messages gave other holders an exit. A telecom provider tied the message header to Zodiac Solutions.

The show cause notice of December 2020 alleged breach of Regulation 4(2)(k) of the PFUTP Regulations, which concerns knowingly or recklessly spreading false or misleading advice that is likely to sway investors, and of the Act's information-gathering powers (sections 11(2)(ia), 11C(3)), because the noticee did not answer three summonses for documents and appearance. The noticee never replied to the notice and skipped the hearings offered, so the officer decided the matter on the record alone.

The order finds that the noticee disseminated false and misleading information that influenced investors in the scrip and violated Regulation 4(2)(k), and that it failed to comply with the summonses. It imposes Rs 3,00,000 under section 15A(a) for the information failures and Rs 5,00,000 under section 15HA for the fraudulent and unfair trade practice, Rs 8,00,000 in total, payable within 45 days.

The officer records that no gain by the noticee and no investor loss could be quantified, that no investor complaints were on file and that nothing showed repeat behaviour. The record does not show who ordered the messages or who sold into them, whether the noticee profited, or whether the order was appealed.

This library tags the matter as a bulk-SMS stock-tip campaign (nearest library category: chat-group pumps). The tagging is ours, not the regulator's.

For the regulator's own account of the facts, read the primary document linked above. This page deliberately summarises the structured record rather than reproducing the order.

What technique is this, and how does it work?

This action is tagged with one technique in our taxonomy. The tagging is ours: regulators charge statutory provisions, not technique names, so the mapping is an editorial judgement described in our editorial policy.

• Chat group pumps — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2022-07-29 SEBI adjudication order

Primary documents

Everything on this page derives from the documents below. Where our summary and the primary document disagree, the primary document is right.

• SEBI order
• SEBI order (PDF)

The linked release is published by the issuing regulator under its own terms. Our summary and narrative above are our own writing.

Related actions

Other actions in the library sharing at least one technique tag with this one.

Record added October 8, 2026. submit a correction.