Ram Mynampati, the former Satyam executive director and an interim spokesperson of the company after Ramalinga Raju’s exit, is learnt to have put in his papers. He has been replaced by Keshab Panda as the head of the healthcare vertical.
Ram Mynampati was the interim CEO of Satyam for a brief period after Ramalinga Raju had confessed to a Rs 7,000 crore fraud spread across five years at the IT company. Panda who was head of the Europe business will be replaced by Vikram Nayyar from Tech Mahindra.
Satyam Computer Services, now been re-branded as Mahindra Satyam, has seen many senior management changes apart from the appointment of a new CEO and CFO in past two days.
Tech Mahindra, which now has 31 per cent in Satyam, has been keen on appointing professionals from within the M&M Group to put Satyam back on track and help erase its tainted image. These announcements are likely to be made by tomorrow. However, Tech Mahindra declined to comment on these management changes.
It is also learnt that AS Murthy, who was the Satyam CEO, will now be the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Mahindra Satyam. He was earlier the head of Satyam global delivery business. C P Gurnani will take over as the new chief executive officer (CEO) of Mahindra Satyam.
Also, another old Tech Mahindra hand, Rohit Gandhi, will take over as APAC- Middle East, India, Africa (MEIA) head. It was earlier headed by Virender Aggarwal who quit Satyam three months back.
To help boost its marketing go-to strategy, Tech Mahindra has appointed Atul Kanwar, former CEO at Birla Transworks the BPO arm of Aditya Birla Nuvo, as the Global head of sales and marketing for Satyam. T Hari was earlier the head of marketing based out of London, but moved to India after the Satyam scandal broke in January 2009.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
cognizant, CTS, H1-B, NRIs
H1B Cap: Count Decreases to 44,000 as of June 12, 2009
US visas for foreign workers still available:
The most recent USCIS H1B cap count indicates a lower number of cases than had been previously reported. The updated count reports the receipt of 44,400 “regular” cap cases, through June 12, 2009. This is lower than the previous count of 47,700, given as of May 22, 2009. No explanation was provided. Thus, this reduced number may reflect either withdrawals by employers, denials by the USCIS, duplicate filings, or an error in the prior cap counts.
Layoffs in India
In IT sector, exit interviews are thing of the past
Exit interviews in the Indian IT industry are now becoming passé. Many IT companies including Infosys, Wipro and Accenture have ‘unofficially’ stopped taking exit interviews for employees in the last few months.
While HR personnel at firms never conducted exit interviews for staff leaving through involuntary attrition (due to bad performance), this practice is now being extended to those who leave voluntarily as well, according to industry sources. Further, a large part of the voluntary attrition now includes several employees who are being ‘forced’ to leave on the pretext of poor performance and lack of projects.
Companies are not seeing adequate value in these exit interviews, as mostly only negative feedback comes through. Also, there are companies like Mphasis which outsource exit interviews to third party consultants which adds to the cost of operation.
An Infosys employee told Financial Chronicle, “Unlike earlier, employees who leave voluntarily are not given an opportunity to give feedback through exit interviews. Earlier employees were asked to provide reasons for quitting and the delivery manager would take inputs personally. But now an employee just fills a basic form on the internet and then you leave. No emphasis is placed on feedback anymore. The open door policy is there just for namesake.” However, according to people in the know there is no official communication on this practise.
Said Vamshi, who was asked to quit Wipro a couple of months ago, “Companies feel it is a waste of time and money since employees leaving in this recessionary environment will tend to give negative feedback.”
Agreeing with this, a project leader with Accenture said that he was told, unofficially, to stop taking exit interviews for his team.
However, companies like TCS and MphasiS are exceptions. MphasiS’ HR head R Elango said, “People tell you lot of things about the organisation that one doesn’t get to know otherwise.’’ However he concurs that some of his peer firms who are retrenching or optimising their headcount have stopped the process.
Their logic it seems is: Why spend so much on these interviews? he added. Officially, there was no response from Wipro and TCS on the issue. According to Anshuman Das of Careernet, which has forayed into outplacement service for IT industry, an exit interview for a single person in India on average would cost about Rs 3,000 and $200 (over Rs 9,000) for an employee in the US. Most companies outsource their processes to third party HR firms to conduct exit interviews and outplacements.
While HR personnel at firms never conducted exit interviews for staff leaving through involuntary attrition (due to bad performance), this practice is now being extended to those who leave voluntarily as well, according to industry sources. Further, a large part of the voluntary attrition now includes several employees who are being ‘forced’ to leave on the pretext of poor performance and lack of projects.
Companies are not seeing adequate value in these exit interviews, as mostly only negative feedback comes through. Also, there are companies like Mphasis which outsource exit interviews to third party consultants which adds to the cost of operation.
An Infosys employee told Financial Chronicle, “Unlike earlier, employees who leave voluntarily are not given an opportunity to give feedback through exit interviews. Earlier employees were asked to provide reasons for quitting and the delivery manager would take inputs personally. But now an employee just fills a basic form on the internet and then you leave. No emphasis is placed on feedback anymore. The open door policy is there just for namesake.” However, according to people in the know there is no official communication on this practise.
Said Vamshi, who was asked to quit Wipro a couple of months ago, “Companies feel it is a waste of time and money since employees leaving in this recessionary environment will tend to give negative feedback.”
Agreeing with this, a project leader with Accenture said that he was told, unofficially, to stop taking exit interviews for his team.
However, companies like TCS and MphasiS are exceptions. MphasiS’ HR head R Elango said, “People tell you lot of things about the organisation that one doesn’t get to know otherwise.’’ However he concurs that some of his peer firms who are retrenching or optimising their headcount have stopped the process.
Their logic it seems is: Why spend so much on these interviews? he added. Officially, there was no response from Wipro and TCS on the issue. According to Anshuman Das of Careernet, which has forayed into outplacement service for IT industry, an exit interview for a single person in India on average would cost about Rs 3,000 and $200 (over Rs 9,000) for an employee in the US. Most companies outsource their processes to third party HR firms to conduct exit interviews and outplacements.
Infosys, IT market, Recession
Lower IT budgets to hit Infy's growth
Infosys Technologies Ltd chairman and chief mentor N R Narayana Murthy admitted that with many of its clients reducing their IT budgets, the bellwether's growth would be impacted this fiscal. "A recent survey of our top 135 clients indicated that a majority of them would downsize their IT budgets. This will impact our revenue growth during the current year," Murthy said.
Reiterating the guidance the company gave in April for the current fiscal, he said as a result of lower IT budgets, the revenue would be 3.1-6.7 per cent less than last fiscal (2008-09) in dollar terms. "At this point of time, we live by the guidance of $4.35-4.52 billion we have given for this fiscal. We are also in the blackout period. We are not supposed to talk about the current fiscal now," Murthy said.
Giving an overview of the global software major's performance in fiscal 2009, Murthy said the entire world was going through a severe financial crisis that had led to a global recession.
"Critics of the free market system say that there is still more pain to come and the financial bubble of the past many years would need time to heal. We have taken several steps to mitigate the impact of the current crisis. We are confident that we will be stronger when the economic uncertainties end," Murthy added.
To buttress his point, he referred to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates that the global financial system would suffer losses to the tune of $4 trillion, with the OECD countries constituting most of the losses.
"For the first time since the World War II, the global economy could contract by up to two per cent. Millions of people have lost their jobs, t
housands of companies have gone bankrupt, leading the governments the world over to pump in trillions of dollars of liquidity into the financial system," Murthy recalled.
Reflecting on the fiscal 2009, Murthy said the company ran into a perfect storm and its growth and revenues were severely impacted.
"There were violent currency fluctuations, with the dollar appreciating against the euro by 15.9 per cent and pound sterling by 28 per cent. Despite these adversities, we ended the year with our revenues at $4.66 billion, growing by 11.7 per cent in dollar terms," Murthy recalled.
At the same time, a record depreciation of the Indian rupee by 26.7 per cent during the last fiscal helped the IT behemoth to grow by 30 per cent, as per the Indian accounting standard.
Asked if the company would revise its guidance during the course of the fiscal as has been the practice in the past, Murthy said he was not allowed to say about the immediate or medium-term future.
"When we announce our results for the first quarter (April-June), my colleagues will be able to answer, as we are not supposed to talk about the guidance in this blackout period," Murthy clarified.
Reiterating the guidance the company gave in April for the current fiscal, he said as a result of lower IT budgets, the revenue would be 3.1-6.7 per cent less than last fiscal (2008-09) in dollar terms. "At this point of time, we live by the guidance of $4.35-4.52 billion we have given for this fiscal. We are also in the blackout period. We are not supposed to talk about the current fiscal now," Murthy said.
Giving an overview of the global software major's performance in fiscal 2009, Murthy said the entire world was going through a severe financial crisis that had led to a global recession.
"Critics of the free market system say that there is still more pain to come and the financial bubble of the past many years would need time to heal. We have taken several steps to mitigate the impact of the current crisis. We are confident that we will be stronger when the economic uncertainties end," Murthy added.
To buttress his point, he referred to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates that the global financial system would suffer losses to the tune of $4 trillion, with the OECD countries constituting most of the losses.
"For the first time since the World War II, the global economy could contract by up to two per cent. Millions of people have lost their jobs, t
housands of companies have gone bankrupt, leading the governments the world over to pump in trillions of dollars of liquidity into the financial system," Murthy recalled.
Reflecting on the fiscal 2009, Murthy said the company ran into a perfect storm and its growth and revenues were severely impacted.
"There were violent currency fluctuations, with the dollar appreciating against the euro by 15.9 per cent and pound sterling by 28 per cent. Despite these adversities, we ended the year with our revenues at $4.66 billion, growing by 11.7 per cent in dollar terms," Murthy recalled.
At the same time, a record depreciation of the Indian rupee by 26.7 per cent during the last fiscal helped the IT behemoth to grow by 30 per cent, as per the Indian accounting standard.
Asked if the company would revise its guidance during the course of the fiscal as has been the practice in the past, Murthy said he was not allowed to say about the immediate or medium-term future.
"When we announce our results for the first quarter (April-June), my colleagues will be able to answer, as we are not supposed to talk about the guidance in this blackout period," Murthy clarified.
cognizant, CTS, H1-B, Outsourcing, Wipro
US protectionism will be counter-productive: Azim Premji
Wipro Technologies founder Azim Premji, has stressed that the recent American decision to clamp down on H1B visas for skilled workers which could halve the number of Indian IT specialists entering the country, would be counter-productive.
"If we get into protectionism, then the West is going to get a wave of protectionism in response, and that is going to turn back the clock 20 years," Premji told The Sunday Times. "And it will be America and Europe that suffer," he said because they will be excluded from the only growth markets left, in Asia, Africa and China. You are not going to grow at 10 per cent trading in London, are you," he asked.
Premji, who holds 79 per cent stake in Wipro, one of the world's biggest software support groups said, "We will grow this year, though it won't be at the 16 per cent rate of last year. First, there is significant slowdown taking place, there are budget cuts, deferment of decisions..."
Wipro Technologies, headquartered in Bangalore and with revenues of 3 billion pounds, has become the world's largest provider of independent research and development services, working with technology partners like Microsoft and Cisco.
In Britain it provides IT services for firms, including Tesco, Wm Morrison and Friends Provident. Beyond IT, Wipro also has interests in consumer products, medical systems and engineering divisions. "We are the second-largest hydraulic cylinder company in the world," Premji said.
The Indian outsourcing giants would benefit from the current downturn, as all multinationals seek further economies, he said. But will an Indian IT giant ever buy one of its larger western rivals. He shrugs. Wipro has always preferred to buy small, Premji added.
The founder of the IT giant further indicated that he would pass over large amount of shares to his education foundation in India.
"If we get into protectionism, then the West is going to get a wave of protectionism in response, and that is going to turn back the clock 20 years," Premji told The Sunday Times. "And it will be America and Europe that suffer," he said because they will be excluded from the only growth markets left, in Asia, Africa and China. You are not going to grow at 10 per cent trading in London, are you," he asked.
Premji, who holds 79 per cent stake in Wipro, one of the world's biggest software support groups said, "We will grow this year, though it won't be at the 16 per cent rate of last year. First, there is significant slowdown taking place, there are budget cuts, deferment of decisions..."
Wipro Technologies, headquartered in Bangalore and with revenues of 3 billion pounds, has become the world's largest provider of independent research and development services, working with technology partners like Microsoft and Cisco.
In Britain it provides IT services for firms, including Tesco, Wm Morrison and Friends Provident. Beyond IT, Wipro also has interests in consumer products, medical systems and engineering divisions. "We are the second-largest hydraulic cylinder company in the world," Premji said.
The Indian outsourcing giants would benefit from the current downturn, as all multinationals seek further economies, he said. But will an Indian IT giant ever buy one of its larger western rivals. He shrugs. Wipro has always preferred to buy small, Premji added.
The founder of the IT giant further indicated that he would pass over large amount of shares to his education foundation in India.
UST Global to invest Rs 500 cr
UST Global, a US-based IT services company, is planning to invest $100 million (around Rs 500 crore) over the next 36 months in India. Mike Zerkel, general manage UST Global, said the company would use the amount for setting up a campus at Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala. The proposed facility would accommodate 8,000 to 10,000 people. The company is looking at a hub and spoke model whereby the Thiruvanthapuram facility would be the hub, while Chennai and Kochi facilities would be spokes.
The company has signed a letter of intent for setting up a 40,000 sft facility in Kochi and planning to employ around 800 people. In Chennai, it has a 1,000-seat capacity campus where 800 people are currently employed.
The company has signed a letter of intent for setting up a 40,000 sft facility in Kochi and planning to employ around 800 people. In Chennai, it has a 1,000-seat capacity campus where 800 people are currently employed.
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