Employees face fallout of Satyam fiasco

Satyam's tag line is "Business Transformation. Together". In the last one week, its 50000 employees have seen their lives transformed in a way they never anticipated. If the Satyam I-card was once a coveted passport, now it seems banks and car dealers have become extremely wary of the Satyam brandname.

On Saturday, a day after Ramalinga Raju was arrested, CEO of Satnav Technologies Amit Prasad got two SMSes and a call from his three credit card agencies. All of them informing him that his credit card limit had been slashed by 80 to 90 per cent. Prasad suspects this is because the agencies perhaps still have his name as a Satyam employee even though he quit the company five years back.

"It is too much of a coincidence that three people call or SMS me on the same day and say your credit limit is slashed by 80 per cent. It is a case of people going overboard. Other examples are a pearl dealer saying discounts are no longer available on a certain identity card. If I am walking in with cash, why should that be there. If I am ready to pay cash for a car loan, why should I be denied a discount?'' he says.

The fallout of the Satyam fiasco is being felt by other IT professionals as well. In the last one week, many of them were reportedly asked to furnish their December salary certificate to banks that have extended home loans to them.

Vikram Kumar, director (India), MAQ Software, says: "A number of my friends told me that their project and HR managers are being contacted to ask whether they are viable and worth giving the credit cards and home loans.''

For Satyam employees, clearly the period of uncertainty is made worse by what seems to be the larger impact of working for what was one of India's most respected software companies.