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Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Mahindra had been eyeing Satyam for a long time


Business decisions are never made at the spur of the moment and the belief that Anand Mahindra decided to go after Satyam Computer Services Ltd after the scam broke out is wrong.
Anand Mahindra had long been eyeing the IT major. He disclosed this in an exclusive chat with Vir Sanghvi.
"Let me make a confession. We actually thought about it a year earlier. To be very honest it happened when there were reports of Raju (Satyam founder Ramalinga Raju) being pursued by IBM or rather preyed by IBM. At that point I had a word with him and said as Vineet Nayar put it that it is a marriage made in heaven. And at that time he was twice our size but I still saw a good fit because of how verticals complimented each other. I was always puzzled as to why he never came back to me," Anand Mahindra, Vice-Chairman and MD, Mahindra Group said.
The Mahindra group missed the IT bus in the 90s. But it placed all IT bets on Tech Mahindra that was revamped and the company grew exponentially. So puzzled as he may have been by Ramalinga Raju's silence, Anand Mahindra did not want to give up on another opportunity of acquiring one of the stars of the IT business.
"I reached out again when the Maytas issue surfaced and again got no answer. I reached out through various intermediaries. And then the infamous confession of Raju took place," said Mahindra.
The rest is history. A dream that was cherished long before the world found out about Raju's misdeed finally came true for Anand Mahindra.

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