It'll be a year on Thursday since B Ramalinga Raju's explosive admission about an accounting fraud at Satyam, but the iconic IT firm that he founded has managed to move on and out of the shadows of the country's biggest corporate scam.
Raju, who saw his image turn from IT industry poster-boy to conman, is in jail awaiting trial.
"People have started detaching Satyam from Raju. . . they realised its only the promoter of the company and not the company itself that was tainted," said C P Gurnani, CEO of Mahindra Satyam -- so rechristened after the company's sale to Tech Mahindra in April last year.
On January 7, 2009, Raju wrote to regulator Sebi stating that he had falsified revenue and profits for many years and created fictitious assets.
He had famously described the fraud, whose size is conservatively estimated at Rs 10,000 crore (Rs 100 billion), as akin to 'riding a tiger and not knowing how to get off without being eaten.'
He was arrested two days later. One year after, Gurnani is a happy man. He feels the decision to acquire Satyam was well meditated and worked out in favour of the company.
"Satyam is in safe hands now and I can only wish them luck. The aspiration now is to be back in the league of the big five", said Kiran Karnik, who was chairman of Satyam's government-appointed board before its sale to Tech Mahindra.
In the eight months after it was sold, Satyam has undergone massive changes, and all for the good.
Reminiscing the events of the past one year, Karnik said the main challenge was to restore jobs as the future of thousands of young people was at stake.
Satyam at that time claimed to have over 56,000 employees on its rolls, although the number was disputed.
The headcount has been rationalised. As against 50,000 last January, the current headcount stands at 30,000.
From April, till date about 40 new clients have been added, taking the total client number to over 400. On the management side too, there have been changes.
"We have formed 12 task forces to look into specific areas, such as task forces looking into branding, governance, finances, legal, growth, R&D, client loss, client wins and others," Gurnani said.
Asked if systems are in place to prevent recurrence of a similar fraud, Karnik said, "Frauds like these cannot be prevented by regulation alone. Checks and balances would have to be formed as part of the system within the company itself."
Besides Raju, the Satyam founder's brother Rama Raju, company's former CFO Vadlamani Srinivas and two partners of auditor PricewaterhouseCoopers are also in jail.
The company recently appointed Deloitte as auditors and the move came on the heels of the CBI charging PwC with complicity in the mammoth accounting scam.
The scam became the subject of multiple probes by agencies like corporate affairs ministry's Serious Fraud Investigation Office, accounting regulator ICAI and Andhra Pradesh police, besides the CBI.
Though the mood is upbeat at Mahindra Satyam and the initial uncertainty is over, Gurnani feels with legal and financial liabilities, a lot is still left to be done.
At least 12 class actions suits are pending in different US courts against Satyam.
Karnik said, "Concerns like the class action suits pending in the US, still exists, however, we are hoping that the penalty will not be too heavy.
"From April till now, I feel only 30 per cent work has been done," says Gurnani, who calls himself the 'chief happiness officer,' and projects restoration of customer confidence and employee confidence as his major achievement.
Earlier, the company was very siloed, such that information could not pass.
"Now we have it unshackled and un-bound," he said.
Gurnani said, "The efforts of the government nominated Board of Directors which included Karnik, Deepak Parekh, C Achutan and others, helped the company to survive."
More than anything else Gurnani feels it's the spirit of over 30,000 employees to keep over 400 clients happy that has helped Satyam -- once the fourth largest software exporter -- survive albeit with scars and bruises.
