Patni may gain Satyam Clients and WIPRO slows hiring

Satyam is going down despite the Indian Government’s best attempts. Already at least two clients may be tapping Patni to make the change over. All State and GE, where Patni is also big have given feelers to Patni to help augment the team. All State, apparently, has terminated its contract with Satyam this week and has started passing on more work to Patni.[1]

Patni is using both “lift and shift” (move the work bundled together quickly to new operator) and “re-badging” (where the Satyam employees maybe taken on into Patni en-masse) approaches to handle the work coming over from Satyam at All State and other clients.

Additionally, 6 other clients including CIGNA have indicated that they may terminate their contract with Satyam and have already asked for 90-day transition plans from Satyam.. But is it easy to move work – specially large offshoring projects – from one consulting client to another?

The re-badging approach may be used to get in the core teams that are between 20-50, while the rest of the team (usually between 200-500) may be let go and replaced by Patni’s own employees.

According to one analyst, some 50-100 clients of Satyam may have a team size of 300-1600 team members.[2] He thinks those kind of projects may be tough to terminate and change, while those less than $1 million may be easily moved. But on the flip side, companies like WIPRO may not be interested in anything below $10 million! Is that so?

I personally feel that companies – even those who have large projects with Satyam – would be drawing up medium term plans and if not immediately, the transition may be happening in another 2-3 months. Think of it, if that work could be moved from the client’s own department and teams to Satyam, then why can’t it be moved to another location or consulting company? The entry barrier maybe relevant only in the short term and not medium or long term!

Wipro slows new hiring

Meanwhile, WIPRO has decided to honor only 7300 of the 14000 offers made on the campus this year. At least 6000 odd may be moved to later.[3]

Reference Links:

1. Satyam’s loss Patni’s gain
2. Two Satyam clients walk: How easy is migration?
3. Wipro to defer joining of fresh recruits to next year