March 15, 1999
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SATYAM COMPUTERS: B RAMALINGA
RAJU Cyberabad Boy "The computer is a productivity tool. I understand it as a businessman, not as an engineer."
Raju is Cyberabad's answer to Bangalore's supremacy in the software field. So far, so good. Satyam packages its services in just as sleek a manner as Infosys does. Even the strategy looks alike. Like Infosys, Satyam has a huge customer base in the US from where it draws 70 per cent of its revenue. Its clients are equally impressive: GE, Ford, Sony, Boeing -- you name it. Like Infosys' Infoscions, the Satyamite is called an "associate". And like Infosys enjoying a special status with the Karnataka Government, Satyam too enjoys the Andhra Pradesh Government's favour. Its first Offsite Development Centre at New Jersey, US, was inaugurated by Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu. But there is a difference. It lies in the fact that the 3,200-odd "associates", unlike in Infosys, are not bonded together by the attraction of stock options and the accompanying lure of becoming dollar millionaires. Even the perks in Satyam are lower than the industry standards. What holds the staff together is Raju's unique "power in one" philosophy that promotes togetherness on the mind's plane, including the singing of a corporate anthem together. Its staff attrition rate is a half of the industry's turnover of 15 per cent per annum. Contentwise, the crux of the philosophy is Japanese. Toyota also has an employee-holding glue, with the additional palliative of protecting its overaged staff. Interestingly, the average age of the top 200 Satyamites is in the mid-30s, much higher than the rest of the industry. However, the company has extended its unorthodox philosophy of retaining employees to also keeping its customers back, which is a feat in the swing-door world of software business. Three-quarters of its clients have stayed with it in each of the past five years. That's an achievement no other top software company can boast of. It is also a highly quality conscious company, with a team currently working on raising the level of its quality management systems and processes to SEI-CMM Level 4. Besides, it has spun off its specialised functions as subsidiaries, some of which have become lucrative profit centres. Satyam Enterprise Solutions, for example, is doing purely ERP work, having posted a 198 per cent growth in turnover in the last quarter. Like all software majors, Satyam Computers too is in every area of software export, be it resolving the Y2K problem or the prospect of exploring the market for revising datafiles for Euro, the new currency of a unified Europe. It is also a frontline provider of computer-aided designs (cad), which drives today's engineering industry the world over. But like all software champions Satyam Computers too is searching for its roots in India. Its subsidiary, Satyam Infoway, is a leading Internet service provider. With demand for Internet connections growing in geometric progression, Satyam seems poised to become a major private-sector player. "For Satyam these are exciting times," says Raju, "and in our view they will only get better." |
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There is a general belief that the moguls
of the software industry should necessarily be engineers because their acquaintance with
technology and quantitative thinking is the essential requirement for thinking up software
solutions to business problems. The fact that knowing business is enough to make good in
software business has been proved by B. Ramalinga Raju, chairman of Hyderabad's Satyam
Computers. An MBA from Ohio University and an alumnus of the Harvard Business School, he
floated Satyam Computer Services in 1987, after smelling opportunity in managing business
information while running the family's textile and construction businesses. "The
computer is a productivity tool," he says, "and I understood it as a
businessman, not as an engineer." 
