ysr wikipedia

ysr wikipedia has been in the news show today so i thought you may need to learn about it here.



Satyam - The Insider Story of the biggest ever Corporate Indian Fiasco - As you are reading this article, you would have already known most facts about Satyam - one of the leading IT giants founded in India in the year 1987, by Ohio University MBA graduate - Ramalinga Raju. What started in 1987 from a small office of 20 employees in Hyderabad, providing onsite back-end services to a tractor manufacturer - John Deere & Co - which in itself was the first of its kind in India Inc - the first ever off-shore BPO deal, had grown to be one of India's leading IT giants offering services to over 600 global clients out of which over 150 were global Fortune 500 companies. However, what remained constant with Raju - the founder chairman of Satyam, meaning truth, right from his childhood till today, has been just one thing - GREED!

For more information on Ramalinga Raju visit http://www.iloveindia.com/indian-heroes/ramalinga-raju.html and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramalinga_Raju

Born to a farmer Byrraju Satyanarayana Raju in a remote Andhra Pradesh village in India called Bhimavaram, Raju graduated from Ohio University with a MBA in the early 70s. While he was in the US, he developed an interest for the then nascent Information Technology and Back Office Processing Industry and wanted to try his hand post his return to India. However, before he founded Satyam in the year 1987, he had already tried his hands in a few of the other industries like textiles and construction. Ramalinga Raju imbibed most of his characteristics from his father - Satyanarayana. The most striking of these unique characteristics are - a penchant to run a business, to be focused and to avoid any and all distractions, to try and attempt something new and different every time and above all a strong desire to own up as much as land as possible. It is this greed of land of Raju that has contributed in bringing about the biggest ever $1 Billion Corporate Scam in India Inc's history. Incidentally Raju's father shifted from Bhimavaram village to Hyderabad in the early 60s with the intention of starting his own business. Once shifted he did start up his own textile business and at the same time started buying as much as agricultural land as possible using the profits that his textile company made. Raju has admitted in the past that he derives his true inspiration from his dad and what a fatal co-incidence it is that Raju followed his dad's footsteps and started diverting the funds that his IT company Satyam earned towards buying his own land just like his father diverted the profits that he earned from his textile company to buy Agricultural land in his native village.

For Raju it was family, caste and his mother tongue Telugu always came first and foremost. This attitude of Ramalinga Raju was the key differentiator between Satyam Computer Services and other major IT giants like Infosys, Wipro and TCS. When it came to hiring executives for Satyam, Raju is believed to have always preferred people who either belonged to his own caste or at least those who could speak Telugu ahead of educational background and sufficient skill sets. What also differentiated Satyam from its other competitors have been Raju's continued interests in other businesses. Satyam's attempt to buy two of the Maytas companies owned by his sons - Teja Raju and Rama Raju, is not the first of its kind. In the year 1998, Satyam was accused of diverting funds to Satyam Constructions Ltd., apart from being accused of floating a clutch of other companies like Satyam Infoway and Satyam Enterprises. Owing to widespread investor ire, Satyam finally had to give-up and these companies were either merged back to Satyam Computer Services or sold-off. However, Ramalinga Raju's never ending and insatiable desire to own land - like his father - brought him back to the real estate business and he eventually ended up creating a group called Maytas - which is actually Satyam written backwards. Maytas Properties Ltd was managed by Ramalinga Raju's son Teja Raju and Maytas Infra Ltd by his other son Rama Raju.

If the findings of the Times of India, in their 8th January 2009 issue (Article Titled: Nowhere to Land, Page 21) are to be believed, huge funds from the actual earnings of Satyam Computer Services have been diverted into both the Maytas companies which in turn used these funds to buy land all over Andhra Pradesh. Whatever Ramalinga Raju earned through Satyam, he poured into buying land all over Hyderabad. What Raju did simultaneously was he befriended the Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister in the early 2000s, Chandrababu Naidu which helped Raju a great deal in acquiring the land wherever he wanted. In 2004, the current Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy was elected and became the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh. YSR Reddy distanced himself from all Chandrababu Naidu loyalists - except Ramalinga Raju. However, this distinction did not come to Raju for free. Ramalinga Raju had to pay a heavy price to win the loyalty of the current CM. However, till date nobody but Raju himself knows what that heavy price was. YSR Reddy had a policy of boosting real estate in Andhra Pradesh which satisfied Raju's desire to acquire land perfectly. As land prices continued to touch sky high and beyond, Raju grew richer. But Raju went one step further and did not stop at just acquiring vacant lands and converting them into mints. With his IT credential overpowering, he pushed the Andhra Pradesh government in building modern landmarks like malls, multiplexes, etc in and around the land owned by Ramalinga Raju. The availability of funds for the Maytas' companies was so enormous that when all the other bidders of government contracts asked for 'visibility gap' funding, Maytas' offered to pay the entire amount upfront in cash! In July 2007, one of the Maytas concerns - Maytas Infra Ltd., bagged the contract to construct the Hyderabad Metro Project which was managed by the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation headed by E Sreedharan. But the AP Government's decision to award the Metro project to Maytas was questioned by DMRC Chief Sreedharan! E Sreedharan had alleged in September 2007 that Maytas Infra to whom the project was awarded might have some kind of hidden agenda. It later came to light, that the hidden agenda of Maytas Infra was indeed to divert the route of the Hyderabad Metro Rail project towards those places where Maytas Properties owned lands. However, because of the stronghold Raju had in the AP government, DMRC was removed from its position as consultant of the prestigious project.

The higher you climb, the deeper is the pitfall. Ramalinga Raju's obsession to own all the land that Andhra Pradesh and especially Hyderabad can offer him - finally brought the curtains down on his illustrious career which started from a tiny village called Bhimavaram and abruptly ended in "Cyberabad" from a 'Successful IT Entrepreneur' to a mere 'Conman & Fraud'. Thus is the fate of Greed!

More information on the Satyam fiasco can be found in the archive section of the Times of India! Go to http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Archive section and look for the 8th January 2009 issue. You can then navigate through the entire paper to find articles related to Satyam. There were a series of articles written on the subject in the Times of India between the 8th of January 2009 and 11th of January 2009 which is also available in the above website.