As Indian Outsourcing Changed, Satyam Hesitated
NEW DELHI — The founder of Satyam Computer Services, B. Ramalinga Raju, made a risky proposition to win his first big client, the tractor maker John Deere: If you don’t like our service, you don’t pay.
With that pitch, which is now the stuff of legend in India, he persuaded John Deere in 1991 to allow his computer programmers to work near the client’s headquarters in Moline, Ill., in a house Mr. Raju called “Little India.” Working only overnight shifts, with no face-to-face contact with Deere executives, the programmers got the job done — supporting Mr. Raju’s theory that they could do their work from India. That trial helped give birth to the country’s outsourcing industry.
Mr. Raju’s iconoclastic moves became something of a trademark during Satyam’s rise. Satyam was one of the first outsourcing companies to move jobs outside of Indian urban centers, and one of the first Indian companies to qualify to trade on the Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange.
Now, Satyam’s demise has been as shocking for supporters in its hometown, Hyderabad, as it has been for investors and the 53,000 employees. The same single-mindedness that drove Mr. Raju to take a chance with his first big client may have laid the groundwork for the fraud at the center of this crisis.
