Mahindra Satyam logs out of Sector V

KOLKATA: The spate of companies' exiting the state continues. Mahindra Satyam on Friday said it wants to return the 2.77-acre plot given to it by the Bengal government at Salt Lake's Sector V. The land has been lying unused for almost four years.

"Towards the end of last month, we had informed the government that we want to give back the land. We are waiting for a reply," a Mahindra Satyam spokesman told TOI from Hyderabad, adding that the decision had been prompted by the "current business realities faced by IT companies".

State IT minister Debesh Das and IT secretary Siddharth could not be reached for their reactions to the Mahindra Satyam pull-out.

The Sector V land was handed over when Mahindra Satyam was still under the Rajus. The MoU was signed in the presence of Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and Ramalinga Raju at Hyderabad on January 30, 2004. The foundation stone was laid on February 24, 2006.

"The Kolkata pullout was inevitable as the company is going through a phase of consolidating infrastructure. Rather than hold on to something it knows it can't find a use for, it did the best thing by returning it to the Bengal government so that it can be given to someone who needs it," a source familiar with Mahindra Satyam's policies said.

"There were also synergy issues since Tech Mahindra already has a big presence in Kolkata," the source pointed out. "From Bengal's standpoint, however, the Mahindra Satyam pullout was the last thing that the state, already grappling with myriad problems, would have wanted." Tech Mahindra is building its own campus within Jagmohan Dalmiya's IT SEZ in Bantala.

Ever since the Mahindras took control of Satyam, there has been speculation whether the software company's new owners would do anything with the land at Sector V since it was too small to be converted into an SEZ.

In September itself, Mahindra Satyam chief executive officer C P Gurnani had told TOI that an "independent Mahindra Satyam entity in Kolkata, if thought necessary at some point, could always come up within a Tech Mahindra complex there".

Satyam had originally announced that its Salt Lake facility would employ 2000 associates. Although these plans never fructified, Satyam had been continuously urging the government to provide it with more land for an IT SEZ.

Investments in the state's tech space have slowed since March 2007 much before the global downturn made IT companies think twice before expanding. Although moves are still afoot to get Wipro to set up a second cam-pus in Kolkata, Infosys has ruled out the possibility of making any investments here till the situation improves.