Sriram K, Sr.VP, Mahindra Satyam

Mr. Sriram K is the Vice President, Consulting and Enterprise Solutions at Satyam Computer Services Ltd. He is an alumnus of IIT Madras and IIMA having work experience of more than 30 years.

He was working in the manufacturing industry (20 years) before coming to Satyam in 2001. He worked in the Consulting department initially in Satyam. He observed that a high sense of conviction was needed. He saw that IT companies were running on a model of 30% growth and 25% profit year after year.

He explained us the problems, he faced while starting a Plastic company (for Cars) in the 90’s. 50% of net worth eroded in first 3 years of production. The company was running on 100% capacity utilization and still making losses. He said, Finance people looked at the balance sheet and went saying the company is gone. Plastic company failed initially because of accumulated problem from the past. He said, he didn’t loose hope even with the initial losses. Chairman had no hope of this company going profitable ever.

He bought a cheap second hand plant and used the same plant to create plastics for other products like chair till the Automobile market picked up. In 6 months, with the old plant, the company became profitable. He said, that was the time when his MBA knowledge helped him.

A question was asked to him about how he went about retaining talent at the time of Satyam fiasco? He said, he didn’t give his employees false hopes. He said, there might not be salary for 6 months. He only told them that if they leave now, the other companies will take advantage of this and pay lesser salary because of too much talent in the market. Moreover, if they stay, Satyam will improve and the growth will happen. If everyone leaves, Satyam is definitely going to die. He said I told my employees to leave only if you get a good salary.

He told us to stick and fight rather than quitting as most of us do whether in business or life. A lot of investment of time and effort goes into establishing relationships with customers/someone else. So, don’t give up when you see failure. This lecture was quite inspirational and motivating. A loud cheer from Gladiators (Class of 2011) summed it all up.

Cheers’