Mahindra Satyam to hire fresh talent for first time

For the first time since the scam-hit Satyam Computer Services was taken over by Tech Mahindra and renamed Mahindra Satyam some six months ago, the company will hire 130 people from outside the company, according to a report.

In June this year, Satyam had initiated a 'virtual pool programme' (VPP) for close to 10,000 surplus employees, under which they were retained at a reduced pay for a defined period of four to six months. Some of these employees were later re-assigned work with full wages.

''We got an approval for external hiring on 4 October. These are speciality skills, which are not there in the virtual pool and are not trainable internally. These junior and middle-level hirings will largely be from India. Besides, we will be hiring one or two senior level people from the market for select areas,'' the company's chief people and marketing officer, Hari Thalapalli, told Business Standard.

He, however, did not disclose the roles to be assigned to these senior executives. The company currently has around 34,000 staffers globally, and is working towards shaking off the bad image with which its disgraced founder, Ramalinga Raju, left the company.

Mahindra Satyam lost 200-250 client companies after the confession by Raju that he had cooked the company's books for several years. Today, the company has 400 customers globally.

''We have so far won 30 new logos, most of them single-digit million-dollar contracts, and 15 new orders in Oracle implementation in 15 weeks. There is a complete strategy that has been laid out to regain lost contracts and we are working towards it,'' Thalapalli said.