Over 2,000 Satyamites quit in Jan-Feb

More than 2,000 employees of Satyam Computer have quit the once iconic IT company in the first two months of this calendar year, bringing the total head count down to 41,622 as of March.

Between January 2008 and February 2009, the company saw a total of 9,400 staff leave, with the highest monthly attrition of 1,602 seen in February this year.

According to a disclosure of financial information of the company made to the Bombay Stock Exchange, "As of March 28, 2009, the company (standalone) had 41,622 associates."

The monthly employee attrition numbers for Satyam (standalone) were 746 in January and 1,602 in February, this year aggregating to as much as 2,348, the filing said.

Further, the average numbers of employees for the company for the three months ended December 31, 2008 was 46,115, while for the months ended January and February were 45,049 and 44,120, respectively.

Once ranked the number four IT exporter, Satyam was rocked by an accounting scandal spawned by its founder Ramalinga Raju. It has now been acquired by Tech Mahindra.

Satyam's staff related expenditure in February was Rs 456 crore (Rs 4.56 billion) with payment of salaries and bonus accounting for Rs 420 crore (Rs 4.2 billion) in the month, the filing added.

Besides, Satyam 's business process outsourcing unit witnessed an attrition of 13.99 per cent in the quarter ended December 31, 2008, while it was 2.52 per cent and 3.64 per cent in January and February, respectively.

The company's key subsidiaries -- Satyam BPO, Satyam Venture, Satyam China, and Satyam Egypt -- had a total employee strength of 3,838, including 2,517 associates at Satyam BPO, as on February 28, 2009.

Last month, Tech Mahindra, which acquired Satyam in April, said the company had 10,000 excess employees in its 40,000-strong head count. However, the company was not looking at layoffs and was exploring sabbatical and virtual bench strategy.