NAME: B. RAMALINGA RAJU AGE: 51 DESIGNATION: Founder-chairman STATE: Satyam Computers

For Bhimavaram Ramalinga Raju Byrraju, founder-chairman of Satyam Computer Services, 2006 has been a good year. Satyam has been experiencing good growth-the 11 per cent sequential growth it reported in the second quarter of 2006-07 is its best in the last five years; it added more than 4,000 employees during this quarter to take its headcount to nearly 35,000; and its topline is expected to touch Rs 6,452 crore by the end of this financial year. On the bourses, Satyam's stock has given returns of more than 38 per cent in the last 12 months. For Raju personally, his appointment in April as Chairman of National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) came as a long overdue recognition of his pioneering contribution to the growth of the Indian it industry and his achievement in building Satyam into the fourth-largest it services company in India.

Hailing from an agricultural family, Raju forayed into textiles and construction when he returned to India in 1977 after completing his MBA from Ohio University in the us, before realising the potential of the it services sector. Since then, Satyam's success has been a well-chronicled story. Result: Raju, who, along with his co-promoters, holds about 14 per cent in the company, routinely figures in the lists of the richest Indians. His management style: the soft spoken Raju believes in empowering his team and then leaves it to individual executives to deliver on stiff targets.

But it hasn't been smooth sailing all the way. Satyam growth, though impressive, has lagged the Big Three of the Indian IT sector-TCS, Infosys Technologies and Wipro. Six years back, it was approximately the same size as Infosys; today the latter is almost double its size.

There are now rumours-which he has repeatedly denied-that Raju wants to exit Satyam. In the first week of December, there was speculation that IBM had conducted a due diligence of Satyam. Both companies denied the reports. With a market cap in excess of Rs 30,000 crore, any move to acquire even a small stake will be an expensive proposition. Raju, for his part, shrugs off such market gossip and is focussing on accelerating Satyam's growth even as he plays the elder statesman role at NASSCOM.

-Venkatesha Babu