Keeping employees happy: Sasken isn't just #1 in The Best Companies To Work For In India, but also #1 in terms of employee perception

Sasken campus, Bangalore: The company's continued ability to attract employees is a function of its future performance, but Sasken does look to be on a growth trajectory

Surprise! Sasken Communication Technologies is #1 in The Best Companies To Work For In India, 2004. Thus, a little over three years since that September day in 2001 (September, 7, 2001, if you must know) when Rajiv Mody, Founder, Chairman and CEO, announced to his then 600-strong workforce that the company would be effecting an across-the-board 20 per cent cut in pay, the telecommunications hotshop's employees have signalled their confidence in Mody's leadership, hr Head Hari Iyer's people management policies and Sasken's business prospects. Circa 2004, corporate fairy tales do not get any more stirring than this.

It helps that the company is doing so much better now. In 2000-01, the company returned a net profit of Rs 28.1 crore on a turnover of Rs 142.83 crore; in 2001-02, it did a net loss of Rs 15.63 crore on revenues of Rs 108.62 crore; but by 2003-04, the situation was as improved as indicated by the corresponding numbers, Rs 18.3 crore (net profit) and Rs 166.1 crore; and in the first six months of this year, Sasken has earned a net profit of Rs 9.73 crore on revenues of Rs 102.56 crore. The company's gamble on staying focussed on the telecommunications industry has clearly paid off. As has its strategy of moving from a pure product play into a hybrid product-plus-services model; today, 74 per cent of its revenues comes from services.

If employees, in general, like to work for a company that is doing well, then, they are passionate about working for a turnaround story. The more recent the turnaround, the greater the passion. That could explain why Sasken isn't just #1 in The Best companies To Work For In India, but also #1 in terms of employee perception (See The Best Companies To Work For In India, By Employee Perception, on page 63). Without taking anything away from the company, the turnaround, and the emotions it has awakened in employees, especially those who were witness to Mody's speech in 2001, probably explain why Sasken is the best company to work for in India.

Not that Sasken doesn't rock; for starters, it is the only company from a list of 10 that this magazine picked in 2001 as a '10 For Tomorrow' listing, that has really thrived. Then, there's the thing about its ability to manage the fallout of the telecom meltdown and effect a change in its business model.

These are simple things, but they are also things that the better companies to work for seem to do better than most others. Both have helped its cause as a great place to work: for instance, the decision to stay focussed on telecommunications, and offer solutions instead of just products, has helped Sasken attract the right profile of workforce. "One of the key reasons I joined Sasken was because it is focussed on wireless telecom; it continued to stay focussed on telecom even during the downturn," says PaanchMukhi HayaVadan, Director (Engineering Products Division), Sasken, who signed on in May 2004. "Then, there's the focus on IP (intellectual property) and innovation."

The company's continued ability to attract employees such as HayaVadan is a function of its future performance, but Sasken does look to be on a growth trajectory. Nearly 5 million 3g handsets sold by NEC, Panasonic and DoCoMo have their code written by Sasken engineers, and the company's multi-media application suite, Strawberra, currently powers 10 models of handsets being sold by phone-majors in Japan, China, the UK, Australia and Hong Kong.

And not that Sasken ignores the little things that really make it a great company to work for. Mody's office, on the sixth floor of one of the blocks that make up Sasken's campus in Bangalore is a 7'x7' cubicle, the same size as the work-bay of an entry-level engineer. Parking slots are taken on a first-come first-served basis (no, Mody does not have a reserved one). And the compensation of every employee is split under the same heads. "The quantum of pay under each head might vary depending on the contribution and seniority, but the number of heads and their headings is the same for everybody," says hr Head Iyer. The company is also moving to a compensation structure with a higher variable component, with senior executives' rewards being linked to economic value-added (EVA). All this, reckons Iyer, has helped and will further help the company demystify the rewards and compensation process and motivate employees better.

Sasken is sure to face several challenges as it grows in terms of size and geographies, and as its workforce becomes increasingly diverse (in January this year, it opened a development centre that now employs 300 in Pune and it already has people from six nationalities working for it). "It is not going to be easy. But if our past is any indication, we have always stayed focussed and executed. We hope to do so again," says Iyer. Size, itself, may not be as pressing an issue as it is with the large software services firms, although it must be said that Sasken will have to grow a great deal in terms of revenues and people before it arrives. "Unlike other (software firms), we are not just a warm-bodies business," says Mody. "There is a great emphasis on creating differentiators through IP; so, when the returns start coming in on investments, it will be a multiplier, not a linear effect." The real challenge for the company, however, will be its ability to manage expectations and keep employees motivated in good times (it has already proved its mettle at doing so in bad).

INTERVIEW/Rajiv Mody/Chairman & CEO "We are happy to be back"

After making it to one of the earlier lists you fell off the map... We are happy to be back. The past couple of years have been tough for all players, more so those focussed on the telecom market. Given Sasken's exclusive focus on the telecom market, we were hit more than others because of the telecom meltdown. We underwent painful changes, made course corrections and are back on growth and solid profitability path. For the past eight quarters we have had good growth and this year promises to be even better. Your workforce has more than doubled... This year we opened the Pune centre. The number of people in the organisation has gone up to over 1,900. Given that we have moved to a unique product-services hybrid model, the kind of people in the organisation have also changed (Editor's Note: Today, 31 per cent of Sasken's workforce has an MTech degree. It was higher when it was a pure product play company; the services play has led to recruitment of graduate engineers.) What are the challenges you see ahead? Cultural integration and transnational thinking. Then, there's the self-destructive nature of some Indian it professionals as seen by the constant churn and attrition issues faced by the industry. The third is to continuously ensure fairness and transparency in the reward and recognition mechanism.