The Satyam(?) Saga and Me: :) & :(

A lot of hullabaloo happened over the Satyam fiasco last week, many lives have been affected due to the entire crap that happened. I wish to share my story associated with Satyam(?).

As mentioned in the title there are two parts to this story: A Happy part :)…and a Sad part :(. Since, I don’t have the option like the movie stars do have in asking people, “Which one should I start with, the SAD part or the HAPPY one”? I will start with the HAPPY part; after all, it’s my first blog of the year 2009, isn’t it!

The Satyam Saga and Me: The Happy Part :)

It was the Day 0, Slot 2 of our placements, back on 19th December’07. The campus was all charged up, after all the Day Zero of placements in IMT Ghaziabad brings with it a war of emotions. Those few days of placements are marked with joy, celebration, tears, hatred, jealousy, fight, gloom and what not; in fact, you name the emotion and you can find loads of it exhibited.

Oh btw!...don’t lemme digress from the topic and rather hit straight out that the first day when I sat for my placements, I had two offers in my kitty :), but the number two always comes with a dilemma, when you have to make a choice out of them. Khair, the offers I had were from Perot Systems and from Satyam (Can U Imagine?).

Back then, both were very pretty identical offers on various standards, hence the choosing part was helluva tough. Naturally, I had to consult several people to guide me on my decision. The first person definitely was my Chairman Placements who surely shares deep respect from my side. I remember his words, “Chose Satyam…aankhen band karke”!

I was just thinking that today, after the mad Satyam burst, if I would have chosen Satyam offer that day, aaj meri aankhen band hi ho chuki hoti. But my thanks to everyone, who had asked me to join Perot Systems, oh yeah, all of you deserve a treat from me...;)

The Satyam Saga and Me: The Sad Part :(

Well, as you might have read in my previous post, I have started dribbling in the stock market, was pretty satisfied with the kind of investment decisions I had made till Jan 5th. I was making a slow and steady rise in my portfolio. But the storm pounded upon me right at 12 noon on the 6th of January.

I had received a call from a close person asking me to sell my Satyam stocks coz I was earning a small profit, but sheeeeeeet, I just said, “Let’s wait!” and went straight into a meeting. What was profit at 10:30 AM the same morning had converted into a big…mind you…BIG loss. :( :( :(

Down by definitely a few thousands, I was reeling with just one satisfactory story on my part, that Thank God, I had not joined Satyam back then. Well, a lesson for life…stock markets is a ZERO SUM game, U win some and one fine day, you lose all of it!...Hehe better stay away from them ;)

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Now, this is just my story and I can relate to it. But, can you imagine how many similar stories might be floating into the fathoms of the world. All because of just ONE BAD APPLE, just one person full of greed!

There are some 53000 employees in Satyam, out of them many are my friends who had accepted the Satyam offer that day. I definitely can imagine the grief and uncertainties through which they might be going at the moment. Studies say that there is one person associated with every three employees in an IT company. With a company of such a stature going burst, it is gonna effect the peaceful lives of so many effected ones. The entire ecosystem will be badly affected.

I wish to call this a heinous crime, how can someone go so much insane out of greed. Someone who is the CEO of the fourth largest IT company of the country, who is a celebrated public figure, who shares respect in the eyes of the world, who is a self made man. How can he not foresee what affect his greed can create in so many lives? It’s shameful Mr. Ramalinga Raju…may be you’ll get bail in few days, but I wish the corporate world learns from the nuances of the effect such an act has on the ecosystem from the Satyam example so that at least that hinders the future in not seeing such a ghastly act again.

I appreciate whatever government is doing to get the situation in control and I wish Satyam gets back to normalcy with the power of its associates, their talent and their ongoing hope. I am with them, after all being part of the affected, I wish all our hopes bring something positive in the end.


Wish to end this with a celebrated beautiful line from the movie Spiderman which I love, “With big powers, comes big responsibilities”!