Satyam outbids rivals to win railway deal

[Indian Railway News]

http://www.siliconindia.com/shownews/49157

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Bangalore: As IT companies are scouting for opportunities at home,
Hyderabad based Satyam Computer Services has beaten its competitors
to grab a significant IT outsourcing contract from the Indian
Railways. Railways plans to outsource three more contracts over the
next few months, each estimated to be worth Rs.450-500 crore.

The IT solution provider is said to have bid the lowest for the
project to provide an asset management solution based on SAP
business software for four locomotive sheds. The contract will be
the first in a series of outsourcing deals worth almost Rs.2,000
crore to be awarded by Railways over the next few months. According
to an anonymous source cited by The Economic Times, the IT firms
like TCS and Wipro were among the other bidders for the deal. TCS
had earlier grabbed the largest domestic deal of e-governance and it
has signed a deal worth over Rs.1, 000 crore with the Indian
government for a project to improve passport services.

India's software companies that earn bulk of their revenue from
overseas, have been paying increasing attention to the domestic
market in the face of the economic downturn. While Satyam has bid
lower than its rivals for the first of Railways' planned contracts,
bidding will only get more competitive for the rest of the
deals. "We plan to have a multi-vendor strategy, and ideally would
like to have different vendors. We will spend around Rs 8,000 crore
on IT over the next five years," said a Railways official.
Government departments and state-owned companies are expected to
spend nearly Rs.7,000-8,000 crore during the year ending March 2009.