When Satyam Falls

I live in an area called Aundh in Pune. The USP of the area is that it lies in the vicinity of Pune University and on the way to the Hinjewadi IT Park. Hinjewadi houses an IT park and a Biotech park and it is at a distance of 16 kms from Aundh. Nearly 1 lakh people work in office buildings of Infosys, Wipro, Cognizant, Tech Mahindra, Satyam, Barclays and other companies in the IT park.

I travel to my office by a 45 minutes bus ride. All through the ride on both sides of the road I see hoarding of Flats for Sales. There are hoardings marketing 3BHKD and also 3BHKDG (3 Bedroom Hall Kitchen, Dining and Garden) flats available with "ravishing amenities". The rate of infrastructure growth in Pune is amazing. The basic amenities unfortunately aren't keeping up as I believe that this Maharashtra government is just as good for nothing as others. The CYG - Commonwealth Youth Games did bring in some development, but it was too less, too late.

Getting back to the point, the exponential development that I have seen in Pune and the Pimpri area puts even Mumbai to shame. Pune is a beautiful city, with superb natural cover, great weekend getaways - for travel lovers like myself and a soothing climate all the year around. Most of these things didn't bring much development for all these years. What brought this spate of infrastructure investment was the blooming IT industry. In 10 years' time Aundh Gaon was replaced by Aundh Annexe. Young IT professionals with loads of money to spend caused the boom that broke college students from all over India couldn't.

Hyderabad, is a similar jewel of Southern India. Bangalore might have overtaken it in terms of investment because of its more pleasant climate, but Hyderabad also houses many multinational IT giants like Microsoft, Wipro, Infosys, Cognizant and Satyam. Satyam is definitely the jewel of Hyderabad.

I remember we used to get a 10% Satyam discount in a lot of stores in Hyderabad. The Satyam brand name was revered and for the local Hyderabadi it was a dream come true. A lot of it has changes in the past fortnight. But Hyderabad's dependence on Satyam hasn't. A huge number of people still depend on this company. The reason being, that the 500 crore salary that is paid each month, doesn't just fill the pockets of Satyamites and the companies like transport, housekeeping etc. that support us, but percolates down to all the maid servants and rickshaw drivers who charge exorbibant amount of money from Satyamites.

Saving Satyam is akin to saving a lot of Hyderabad. I love the city and I love my job too. Hope they both keep safe.