Syntel: Lazard slipping away?
By Sandhya

Over the last 12 months, Techgoss had published a series of exclusive reports giving details of all that was happening inside the BPO, KPO and IT divisions of one of India’s most successful IT-ITES companies Syntel.  One report showed how that in the recent past Syntel BPO was overly reliant on couple of key clients. Also, reported were the exits of the CEO and key HR people.

Regular readers of Techgoss are well aware that a large number of our articles are crowd sourced.  People send in tips, story ideas and even articles. Many of our contributors have full times jobs in IT-ITES, and so prefer using a pseudonym.  A well informed cluey Tipster tells us

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Process Lazard is a US Client based Process which was migrated to Syntel in early 2009. The process has always been in choppy waters as the client was unhappy with the performance of the team.

The talk around the water cooler is that as many as 60% of the employees in the Process as of 2010 are buffers i.e. extra employees allocated to a process so that the process settles down quickly and smoothly.

The news is that the client is so unhappy with the process that they have decided to take back the process. The process is expected to be withdrawn by March / April 2011.

Many of the employees who migrated the process have a US Visa and their bonds have expired in Nov 2010. Syntel currently has another process called Arries in the pipeline (Exclusively reported by Techgoss in a previous article). The employees of Lazard who have a valid 10 year US Visa are being sent to US for migrating the new process.

Lazard leaving Syntel is a blow for External Recon Head Ashok Yadav who not so long ago was happy with all that was going on in his vertical.
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(Tipsters, Big thank you for all your tips and photos. Do you have a story to tell? If you need to speak to us in confidence or write for us, email us at techgoss[at]hotmail. Or use the Anonymous Tip form at the top of our website. Anonymity guaranteed. We pay Rs. 700 – Rs. 1000 for 100 – 200 word snippets. Unfortunately, we cannot use any tips which are not backed up by enough facts)

(Techgoss had published the following on Dec 10, 2010)

Syntel Arries: US Visa hurdles
By Sandhya

Over the last 12 months, Techgoss had published a series of exclusive reports giving details of all that was happening inside the BPO, KPO and IT divisions of one of India’s most successful IT-ITES companies Syntel.  One report showed how that in the recent past Syntel BPO was overly reliant on couple of key clients. Also, reported were the exits of the CEO and key HR people.

Regular readers of Techgoss are well aware that a large number of our articles are crowd sourced.  People send in tips, story ideas and even articles. Many of our contributors have full times jobs in IT-ITES, and so prefer using a pseudonym.  A Tipster tells us about the travails of a new Project Arries

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The Syntel Transaction Processing vertical was buzzing with excitement in September when news came filtering in that there would be a new project from UK which would involve many of the people in the team getting an opportunity to work for 6 months in UK.  This was the first bright ray of sunshine after two years of recession induced hard times, and so everyone was excited.  Sadly, there was much disappointment when the Project fizzled out.

Soon there was another announcement that we had a Global Project ‘Arries’ part of which would involve getting On the Job training in America.  The HR Team invited applications for Project Arries which was to be managed from Syntel’s new facility at Airoli, Mumbai.  Then came the usual roadblocks – Only Associates (E1) and above were eligible to apply to work at Arries, and then only if their immediate managers were ready to release them. Even as Trainees were told they could not join this new project, some external recruitment was done. People who got a job in this project were told there were would be no Promotions for one year although the actual salary would increase.

There was much lobbying and many managers’ favourites got a place in the team

Once the basics of the new Arries team was in place,  applications were put in for L-1 Visas for them to get trained in USA.  There was shock when the US Embassy rejected majority of the Visas as they did not meet the criterion of minimum salary.

Due to lack of Visas, the entire migration got delayed from Nov to mid-January, 2010.  People who got rejected for a US Visa next applied for an Irish Visa as the Project has a footprint in Ireland as well. The Irish Visas came through.  Syntel employees working in other teams, who had previously worked in USA and already had Visas were transferred to the Project, to make up the team for USA.

There was some uncertainty with some people being pulled out during the basic training in Mumbai, and then sent back.  The TP Vertical was definitely affected by the uncertainty.

Many are now flying out to begin the Arries On the Job training this week.
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