Ramalinga Raju: Profile

Ramalinga Raju, the founder and chair of Satyam Computer Services, has resigned over Enron-esque "financial irregularities", as public trading on the stock of the company he built from the ground up has been suspended.

Before reading the story linked above, I didn't know who Raju was, so my curiosity was piqued.

Born and raised in Bhimavaram, India, Raju did his MBA at Ohio University, and did a business-ownership course at Harvard.

In 1997, he founded Satyam Computer Services, which began by taking on outsourced projects from US companies, before "outsourced" became the buzzword that it is today.

Whether from his education or his work experience, Raju saw a future in which Western countries would seek out less expensive ways to manage and carry out IT tasks, similar to how manufacturing processes function. He was right, and has built a massive fortune on that foresight.

Over the years, Raju won several awards in the tech sphere, including Ernst & Young's Entrepreneur of the year in 2007, but is also no stranger to controversy. Just a few weeks ago, Raju was involved in an insider-trading scandal with Maytas Infrastructure, which his sons owned. Under scrutiny, the deal fell apart.