Clarifications on the results of Round 5

08 February 2012

Dear Spark the Rise Community,

Once again, thank you for your hard work and for your active participation on the site – this has been an exciting month.

Regarding the final results for Round 5: in the weeks leading up to our announcement yesterday, we conducted a series of thorough security checks to ensure that no fake votes were included in the final tally. These security checks were the same as all the others we have conducted in the previous Rounds, and there are several parameters that we follow. Among the many factors we consider during our security checks, we look for fake and suspicious email IDs, duplicate votes, email IDs generated through sites such as mailinator.com (please see this announcement for a full list of unacceptable domains), and signs of collusion.

It’s essential that we target all four of these. Mass-generated emails, from email domains such as mailinator.com, do not constitute actual votes – one user can easily create thousands of email IDs. We cannot accept duplicate votes, as users are only allowed to vote once for a project. And, finally, it is against the spirit of Spark the Rise for different projects to collude and share votes on a mass scale; a fair competition requires an honest, focused strategy on behalf of the competitors.

Unfortunately, in Round 5, we discovered an unprecedented amount of all four of these voting patterns and were forced to make some difficult decisions regarding certain projects.

We are committed to making this process fair and transparent, and we sincerely appreciate the dedication you all have showed toward ensuring that Spark the Rise remains fair, democratic and inclusive. A special thank you to our fans who have welcomed and endorsed these actions on our social media channels, particularly Facebook. We are pleased that you understand the steps that we have had to take and thrilled at the levels of support you have been showing.

Please contact us at brand@mahindra.com with any questions.

Thank you!

--Rise Team