Ramlinga Raju

Byrraju Ramalinga Raju (born September 16, 1954) is the former Chairman of Satyam Computers. Satyam was established by Ramalinga Raju and is amongst the top Indian IT vendors with over one billion dollars in revenue. On January 7, 2009, Raju resigned from the Satyam board after admitting to corporate fraud.

Early life

Raju was born to Byrraju Satyanarayana Raju in Bhimavaram. He did his B.Com from Andhra Loyola College at Vijayawada prior to receiving an MBA degree from Ohio University. He has attended the Owner/President course at Harvard. For his achievements and contribution to society, he has been awarded Doctorate by Anna University Chennai on 14 Dec 2007. He has two brothers and a sister. Raju is married to Nandini. They have two sons, Teja Raju and Rama Raju, and a daughter, Deepti, who is married.

Career

Raju founded Satyam in 1987 after venturing earlier into other businesses such as construction and textiles. He learned a great deal during his time at OU^{[clarification needed]} and in the United States. During that time he foresaw the upcoming trend of outsourcing and the future prominence of computers. He started an IT company with 20 employees and bagged a multitude of IT projects from US companies. Satyam rapidly developed and became a multinational company with thousands of employees spread over many countries. Raju showed a strong social orientation and has been furthering the cause of social transformation through Byrraju Foundation and EMRIEMRI.

Fraud

Raju was involved in a controversy involving the company Maytas and margin selling of his shares. It eventually ended in Raju admitting to an accounting fraud to the tune of 7000 crore Rupees or 950 million pounds, and subsequently resigning from the Satyam board. The Indian subsidiary of PricewaterhouseCoopers was the auditor of Satyam.