"The first few months featured massive crisis management," says Rohit Gandhi, Mahindra Satyam's senior vice president. "There were issues of customer and employee retention, then there were legal cases to deal with, there was corporate governance to be brought back. We formed an Asia Pac leadership council and brought everyone together. It could not have been done by one or two people. We met every week and came out with a proper to-do list."

This to-do list had 30 points. Initially, 24 points were about turning-around the embattled tech company and six points were about growth.

"As part of the crisis, we lost a number of key people," says Gandhi. "We started massive hiring. Initially, I thought that that would be my biggest challenge. Why would somebody want to join Satyam? Surprisingly, there were so many people in the market--good people from very good organizations--who said we want to come here just for the fun of it. They wanted to be a part of this company that was to see a turn around.

"We promoted a number of people internally to leadership positions. The rest we hired from top IT companies.