IT has been nearly a year since Arab News carried any reports on its CompuNet pages about Satyam Computer Services. The company has been trying to push news releases about its Middle East operations during that time, but concerns about the fuzzy nature of those releases made them seem more like PR fluff than news and so they were cast aside. There’s a better understanding now about why this publicly held company needed to be so vague about the monetary aspects of its operations, and it can no longer blame its inability to release financial details on the secrecy demanded by its clients.
Since Thursday, numerous attempts have been made to get a statement from Satyam about their operations and employees in Saudi Arabia. The telephone number listed at www.satyam.com for their Alkhobar office, 050-985-1295, has been out of service. It is incredible that the main contact number listed for the Indian outsourcing giant’s head office in the Gulf’s largest economy is an out of service mobile telephone number, but there was no other number available. Satyam’s Riyadh telephone number rang, but never answered.
Contacted in Dubai on Saturday, Satyam executive Wael Merhi claimed that operations in Saudi Arabia are “still going on as normal.” He advised that there were only sales executives in Saudi Arabia and that they were out of the office, which is why the Riyadh telephone never answered. Merhi promised to provide Alkhobar telephone numbers on Sunday.
That never happened, and on Sunday afternoon, Arab News paid a visit to Satyam’s Alkhobar office. Yashwant Pai, deputy general manager, Business Development, Satyam Saudi Arabia received us at the company’s Saudi headquarters in Al-Subeaei Towers. After checking our identification, Pai’s hands began to shake. Simply asking him for the correct contact number for Satyam’s Alkhobar location resulted in his making a frantic telephone call to advise Satyam management that journalists were at their office.
While Pai spoke to the higher ups, we had a look around. Al-Subeaei Towers is a recently constructed building but tape residue was in numerous places on the walls in Satyam’s main office space, as if posted items had been hastily torn down. A few workstation tables were covered in a mess of monitors, cables and papers, but several were empty of anything. Even the outer reception area had a derelict appearance.
After finishing the conversation on his mobile handset, Pai refused to make any comment at all about Satyam’s operations and only reluctantly provided us with his business card, before ushering us out of the office.
In an e-mail, Merhi stated that since 2006 Satyam has had a valid license for its Saudi Arabian operations, issued through the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority (SAGIA). Based on the findings of the Indian Government’s investigators, SAGIA, the Ministry of Commerce, or other Saudi government entities could request a review of Satyam’s license application and accounting procedures in the Kingdom.
With the shortage of available local talent in the information technology field and the difficulty and expense in getting visas to bring IT specialists to the Kingdom, both the government and private sectors in Saudi Arabia have increasingly outsourced their IT requirements to Indian companies. Satyam, Tata, Wipro and other Indian IT firms have operations in Saudi Arabia handling jobs from ERP implementations to network development consultation. It should be expected that Satyam’s contracts already under way will be completed as long as the company continues paying its staff. Gaining new business will be another matter. Since that is the focus of most of Satyam’s employees in Saudi Arabia, they face difficult days ahead.