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-B Ramalinga Raju, Founder and Chairman, Satyam Computer Services
Satyam has come a long way since its humble origins and
today stands one among the Top 10 Ivy League of IT companies in India. Some of
its biggest customers include names like GE and TRW Inc. It has relationship
with 155 of Global 500 companies. With a current strength of 23,432 employees,
it continues to higher new employees with gusto. Meanwhile the net employee
addition for the quarter was around 950, taking the total employee strength to
23,432. Its BPO entity-Nipuna is also maturing and gaining market traction. In
an exclusive interview to Shrikanth G of Dataquest, Ramalinga Raju, talks about
his company, its competencies, outsourcing trends and its impending transition
to the sixth orbit.
On
Satyam's performance in the recent times
We have performed extremely well over the last three years, and have grown
fairly well post the dotcom bubble burst. The key strategies we adopted were
many and significant, for instance, we de-risked our business and expanded into
number of verticals such as retail, healthcare, travel, transportation and
energy. At the same time we reduced our dependence on the top 10 clients, and
enhanced and deepened our relationships with the US/Global Fortune 500
companies. We also enhanced our footprints in Europe and Asia Pacific quite
significantly and at the same time built our competencies to cater to the
various verticals we have forayed in. We
have established leadership position in enterprise business solutions,
consulting, and engineering services. Growth has taken us across the globe,
across different services and is fairly broad based. So, in all, it's a very
balanced growth for us.
 On achieving the
$1bn mark
We have given our guidance, which indicates that the company would cross the
billion-dollar mark this fiscal end. In the eventuality of us achieving that, it
would indeed be a very gratifying moment for me and for thousands of employees
at Satyam-as we are able to ramp up over the years and create a distinct mark
on the IT sector with clients spread across the world.
Also, I would like to reiterate that this phenomenal performance has
happened because of the boom in the IT and BPO sector for which we owe a great
deal to the pro-active government policies.
On the sixth orbit
We describe the evolution that has taken place in Satyam by way of orbits.
In the last 15 years we have moved from the first orbit of being an onsite
driven company, started doing some pioneering work at offshore in the second
orbit, and in 1991, we became the first Indian company to have granted a 64
kilobit connection to a customer in the US. The third orbit was all about
building quality systems and delivery capabilities. In the fourth orbit we
enhanced our global footprints by having more offsite centers. The fifth orbit,
which we are in today, is about understanding customer needs from a business
perspective. Here, technology is taking a more virtualized approach and emphasis
is on building deep relationships with customers. We have operated on that
mindset and we believe the success factor depends on how well one anticipates
and manages change. In that line we are sure that there is going to be a sixth
orbit, but we are not sure when that is going to happen or what it is. What I
can say is that in the sixth orbit the center stage would be a mindset of
leadership and innovation, and more global opportunities.
Has
anything changed in your Right Sourcing model as the market realities keeps
changing?
The ability to meet the requirements of today and at the same time
anticipate future challenges and be prepared, is the key to success. In that
line the right sourcing model is all about doing things in the right manner, and
creating the right mix of resources from across geographies and building
competencies. In terms of what has changed, the scenario right now is in
managing and meeting the growing cultural diversities. For instance, different
professionals come from varying backgrounds. Apart from that, near shore
operations are also gaining importance and becoming part of the right sourcing
model. These dynamics were not there in the past, but are gaining ground as
market evolves further. Another key aspect of the offshoring trend has been the
increasing acceptance of Indian vendors in large multi-million dollar and
multi-year contracts. Such deals require significant investments in terms of
resources and domain competence. Satyam is increasingly competing in a number of
such deals and is well positioned to capitalize on this trend.
Every IT services
company has a delivery model and offers slew of solutions. Given that, what are
the key differentiators Satyam has?
Well, we define ourselves as operating in an integrated IT business process
and outsourcing space. There are number of players who are our competitors.
Strictly going by definition, we might not be different from others, but, in
reality, the differentiators are the unique set of competencies we have and the
significant value we provide to the customers. We are a company known for our
deep customer relations. We have big strengths on the automotive vertical and
that's well validated by the fact that eight of the top ten global automotive
majors are our clients. We have big strengths in financial services and telecom.
And, in retail, we have built core competencies. We are seen as a leader in
enterprise business solutions and were able to establish foothold in engineering
services.
Is Satyam keen on
growing inorganically?
Acquisition is indeed high on our growth strategy. We have acquired Citisoft
($23.2 mn) in the financial services and Knowledge Dynamics ($9.2 mn) in the
data warehousing and BI space. We would be evaluating more M&As as we move
forward.
Succession plans
We have given fair amount of importance to this and we intend to create a
more distributed leadership, and have taken initiatives in grooming leaders. We
have installed the Satyam School of Leadership for this purpose.
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