Big IT brands must protect India’s equity abroad
By Ganapathy Viswanathan on Jan 19, 2009 in crisis communications
After the Mumbai terrorist attack, the Prime Minister for the first time, spoke at an important event honoring the country’s corporate heroes. During his 20 minute emotional speech, he touched upon Satyam. The Prime Minister said the Satyam episode is a blot in our corporate image both in India and in the global markets. While this could be a case in isolation as of now but before the situation worsens in other parts of the world, the good friend of Satyam in the past and leaders in the IT space who has helped India earn a valuable respect in the technology space must come forward. In this hour of crisis, they must step in and must work out a good strategy to guard the equity of brand India in the IT domain. It has taken several years for India to build brick by brick to gain a respectable stature in International markets. Let’s safeguard it.
The government of India has acted fast to salvage the situation by roping in some of the best brains to get the SATYAM SHIP to safe shore, I strongly feel big brands in the IT space along with CII and NASSCOM must chalk out some focused strategy to send the right and correct message to the world. Let’s be honest and spell out the truth to the world as what went wrong at Satyam. This will most certainly help the Satyam employees, its customers, business partners and financial institutions both in India and abroad.
All of us know that India contributes a huge chunk in the technology space in the global market. This is the time for the big daddies of IT brand with the Government to run a hard hitting PR campaign to build credibility. In the long run it will help all of us if only we act fast keeping in mind the nation’s interest. How this can work? A quick think tank team from the technology space and the communication space is roped in to douse the flame on this sinking ship with some forceful and hard hitting campaign.
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On Jan 21, 2009, Rohan Mishra said:
The satyam episode, like many other ‘ corporate’ debacles will ebb with time..down, deep & away.
However to bring perspective into PR operability it is the onus of media & PR practioners to delianate the Indian ‘ IT’ adavantage & corporate misgivings.
A two way PR approach in my view works best to salvage th situation ( if not too late already)…
One the one side generation of confidence in the Indian expertise & value offering should be a consistent media feature to ensure that globally we still come strong.
This is inevitable owing to the tremdous fulcrum we have created in being IT pioneers and no one should take that away from us since it is an ‘earned’ right.
On the other side a probe into corporate loopholes & inexcusable governance ‘faux pass’ should be looked into to provide a balanced perspective.
The role of PR thus should be seen as broader than ‘ client led’ to more issue led communication taking cognizance of brand ‘ India’
On Jan 21, 2009, kapadiia himanshu said:
well , even today i saw headline talking about the good work raju had done and how people were praying for his safety and release…….i belive u r as good as your last friday movie
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