Why Satyam is still worth investment?

Satyam has been the talk of the town since last week. So much has been the impact that another national hero Ajmal Amin Kasab has been pushed out of the front page of the newspapers. War with Pakistan suddenly seems to be secondary and nobody cares when President Bush leaves the White House and the 'Black' Barack Obama gets inside the most talked about residence in the world.

Coming back to Satyam there have been rumours running from the CFO committing suicide to the Rajus leaving India and hiding in Dubai. Many eminent personalities from the IT industry have made absurd comments to score personal points over Satyam. The news channels have reported all sorts of rumours without examining the authenticity of the source.

Being in Bangalore knowing a people from Satyam, Wipro, Infosys or TCS is like knowing one of your cousins. The situation is not as bad as it is being played out to the people of India and the globe. True the fraud that has happened doesn't have any parallels in the Indian IT industry. But it will be heights of insanity to considers India's 4^th largest IT giant to be finished.

Some of the reasons why Satyam is still a good company to invest on are:

• IT is a knowledge oriented industry and thus Satyam's main assets are its employees and not its capital. And the employees have the same amount of grey matter inside their head that they had two weeks ago when Ramalinga Raju was a great IT leader.
  
  
• With over 60 offshore bases and development centres spread across the country serving Satyam has a solid infrastructure.
  
  
• Satyam in its account still has 185 of the Fortune 500 clients besides thousands of other clients both in the domestic and the international market.
  
  
• Being the IT service providers to FIFA 2010 World Cup Satyam will have a great platform to portray the better face of its corporate image and shed some of the fears of the international investors.
  
  
• Government of India has shown its intent to save the company by appointing new board of directors. In a worst case scenario the Government will most likely bail this company out of the financial crisis.
  
  
• Malayasian Airlines giving a project to the company in this hour of crisis is testimony enough that corporates still feel Satyam is not finished.
  
  
• In case of a merger or a takeover any buyer will get a complete company with employees, clients, development centres and offshore bases. To build an entity like Satyam will take years for any company irrespective of its capacity to pump in money.
  
  
• Irresponsible comments by many IT big shots have charged up the Satyamites. Many of them are willing to take a pay cut and prove their competitor wrong. In this hour of crisis the management needed this solidarity among its employees.
  

True Satyam has gone through a tsunami in the last week but even its worst critics will have to acknowledge Satyam is down but not out.