Ramalinga Raju
| Byrraju Ramalinga Raju | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
16 September 1954 Bhimavaram, Andhra Pradesh, India |
| Residence | Hyderabad, Telangana, India |
| Nationality | Indian |
| Occupation | former Chairman of Satyam Computer Services |
| Criminal penalty | Convicted to 7 years prison |
| Criminal status | Out on Bail |
| Spouse(s) | Nandhini (m. 1976) |
| Children | 2 |
Byrraju Ramalinga Raju (born 16 September 1954) is the former chairman and CEO Satyam Computer Services from 1987 and till 7 January 2009, stepping down admitting to embezzlement of financial figures of the company to the tune of Rs 71.36 billion (approximately US$1.5 billion), including Rs 50.40 billion (approximately US$1 billion) of non-existent cash and bank balances. In 2015, he was convicted of corporate fraud relating to Satyam collapse.
Ramalinga Raju, the eldest of four children, was born on 16 September 1954 to a farming family. He earned a Bachelor of Commerce degree from Andhra Loyola College at Vijayawada and subsequently earned an MBA from Ohio University in the United States. After returning to India in 1977, Raju married at the age of twenty two. He ventured into many businesses including Dhanunjaya Hotels, Cotton spinning mill named Sri Satyam Spinning funded by Andhra Pradesh Industrial Development Corporation (APIDC) with an investment of ₹9 crore (worth almost $7 million in 1983 prices). As the businesses failed Raju moved into real estate and started a construction company named Mytas Infra Limited.
In 1987, Raju incubated Satyam Computer Services along with one of his brothers-in-law, DVS Raju at P&T colony in Secunderabad and 20 employees. In 1991, Satyam won its first fortune 500 client – John Deere. Raju navigated Indian bureaucracy to obtain the required clearance to transmit data from India. The company went public in 1992. Raju was enrolled in the Owner/President Management (OPM) program at Harvard Business School in the 1990s. In an interview with Deccan Chronicle way back in 1998, Raju was talking about Satyam's ambition of operating out of 50 countries with an employee count of more than 50,000. In 1999, Raju launched Satyam Infoway (Sify) as Satyam's internet subsidiary, thereby becoming an early participant in the Indian internet service market. Sify was later sold to Raju Vegesna.
In September 1995, as Raju was building Satyam, Andhra Pradesh had a new Chief Minister, Chandra Babu Naidu, who wanted to bring in change and saw IT as a strategic industry to focus on and Raju became instrumental in shaping the state's information technology initiatives like 'Mee Kosam'. Raju had unfettered access to the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh at a very personal level. Research into his life has exposed close links between business and politics.
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