8,500 jobs may be axed if work not found: Satyam

Satyam Computer Services today said 8,500 idled employees might be fired in six months, unless business picked up as the Indian software provider reorganised.

“There is a possibility” the employees who have been furloughed on reduced pay because of a lack of work will be fired, newly-appointed Executive Vice-Chairman Vineet Nayyar said in an interview. The cuts would represent 18 per cent of the workforce, based on the number of employees Satyam said it had in April.

The company will release a reorganisation plan tomorrow to cut costs and help retain customers after a stock collapse prompted by founder B Ramalinga Raju’s admission in January that he overstated assets.

The possibility of Satyam’s business improving enough in six months so that all the idled employees can be deployed is “very negligible,” Srivathsan Ramachandran, a Chennai-based analyst at Spark Capital Advisors, said. Satyam, which said it had about 48,000 employees at the time Tech Mahindra agreed to buy it, has 8,500 employees on a “virtual bench” because of a lack of orders, Chief Executive Officer Chander Prakash Gurnani had said yesterday.