Satyam to manage IT services at Fifa World Cup

Satyam Computer Services, the IT major trying to recover from the accounting fraud committed by its founder, is all set to ride the upcoming Fifa World Cup and create a new vertical to
cater to the sporting needs worldover.

The company is putting to test its skills in managing the sports events by offering an IT backbone to the football world cup starting from June 11 in South Africa.

“We have been working on this since 2007. Our IT backbone is going to take care of the entire world cup event. For instance, we are managing the issuance of about three million tickets, assets worth $1 billion spread in 10 different venues and accreditations to about 2.5 lakh people. Additionally, we are managing the deployment of about 1.5 lakh volunteers,” M Sridhar, Satyam’s head of newly created sports vertical, told DNA from South Africa.

Satyam was offered the contract to provide IT services to the football world cup during the regime of the tainted founder of the company B Ramalinga Raju.

The company has been since working on developing applications and solutions for the event, which is estimated to be larger than the Olympics in terms scale of operations.

“We have already tested the IT backbone by providing services at the Confederation Cup, which was the precursor to the world cup. After that, we started deploying the solutions for the main event,” he said.

According to him, more than the revenues, the company through this event is trying to enhance the branding and developing a new vertical.

“We are the only Indian company so far to offer these services. Additionally, our hoardings and brand will be visible at every venue during the entire event. About 30 billion people are expected to watch the event either directly or through the TV sets. That’s the brand advantage we are eyeing more than the revenue,” he
said.

The 200-strong team which has been working on the Fifa cup project is said to have done all final checks for going live with the event.

“We have also created a help desk to provide services on any query in eight languages back in Hyderabad. The BPO arm of Satyam is handling the helpdesk,” he said.

Now, the company is going ahead with other plans to develop this specialisation in to a new vertical.

Satyam is all set to finalise deals with NBA and Nascar, a car racing event, both in the US. The company is also set for handling Singapore Youth Olympics.

“We are creating technology and solutions necessary to handle any sporting event. It might be suitable for any event  including cricket. But for certain we are developing a new vertical by leveraging on the experience we gain from Fifa cup,” Sridhar said.