Mahindra Satyam opens centre for MasterCard

Steps up talent search in India, Singapore

IT consulting and services company, Mahindra Satyam (the brand identity of Satyam Computer Services Limited), has established a centre of excellence (CoE) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

The CoE, will provide support for global testing for payment card security provider MasterCard's business applications, as well as application development in Java and business intelligence.

Mahindra Satyam’s testing CoE for MasterCard will support the company’s efforts around research and development, and facilitate global collaboration. “Establishing this CoE connotes the beginning of a valued relationship with MasterCard,” Lakshmanan Chidambaram, senior vice-president (sales and operations), Mahindra Satyam, stated in a press release on Monday.

Through this collaboration, Mahindra Satyam intends to leverage its proven expertise of testing in credit card functionalities and automated process to enhance the customer and cardholder experience of MasterCard around the world, the release added.

Meanwhile, the company is stepping up its efforts to attract talent across Asia-Pacific and India. It has tied up with Singapore’s premier university NUS besides other leading institutions to recruit ‘soon-to-be’ engineering graduates. All recruits, almost all of whom are Singaporean citizens, will be trained for three months at Hyderabad and Cyberjaya in Kuala Lampur global delivery campuses post which they are expected to be deployed as full-time project staff on ‘live’ implementations across Apac.

Mahindra Satyam has already achieved more than 55 per cent localisation of its employee base in every country outside India where it currently operates in. In Singapore, it (localisation) is around 95 per cent.

“This (hiring) is an ongoing exercise and our idea is to bring in batches of people on board, every quarter,” Hari Thalapalli, chief people's officer of Mahindra Satyam, told Business Standard.

The company’s total headcount stood at 29,266 as of March 31, 2011, a net addition of 434 for the fourth quarter and 1,729 for the year, while attrition has come down to 22 per cent in Q4 as compared to 25 per cent in Q3FY11. It plans to add around 12,000 associates over the next four to five quarters through a mix of lateral and campus hiring.

“The response from NUS has been overwhelming and we are very impressed with the caliber of applicants. We have successfully implemented this in many other countries including the neighbouring Malaysia and it has worked very well. Talent retention is almost as challenging as talent acquisition in our industry and if we don’t think out-of-the-box, our growth will be seriously impeded,” Mahindra Satyam’s HR head (Asia-Pacific), Suresh Samudrala, said in a release today.