Many job seekers wrongly think that joining a big company is automatically better than joining smaller companies. People perceive that big companies will have huge profits and faster growth. This is wrong thinking because a big company doesn’t automatically translate into a good company. Truth is that good organizations are performing organizations. Performing organizations sustain and succeed in the market in good and bad times.
Today, we can see many non-performing, big companies that have failed. Here is a small list of many such companies.
Satyam
Satyam is one of the biggest controversial companies in the IT sector in India. In the year 2009, its Chairman Ramalinga Raju confessed that Satyam’s accounts have been falsified. Satyam was a big company started in 1987 was ranked 4 in top Indian IT companies list in 2008. But in 2009, it collapsed. Earlier, many people thought that Satyam company is the place where their career will grow. But many of them lost their jobs after 2009 and their career prospects got negatively impacted because they worked at Satyam.
Nagarjuna Finance
Nagarjuna Finance, another big company (based out of Hyderabad), got into controversy for failing to return crores of rupees to depositors. Started in 1982, Nagarjuna Finance Limited was a big company with lakhs of investors. But since early 2000, the company started defaulting on repayment of matured deposits. Though it was a big company, it could not avoid failure and protect the depositors’ money.
Motorola
Few years back, Motorola dominated the mobile industry. Earlier it had almost 50% of the cell phone handset market. It passed up chances in 1995 to enter the digital market early, sticking with more primitive analog designs. Within four years, Motorola’s market share had slumped to 17%.
Unitech
The Unitech Group is second largest real estate investment company in India. But the Unitech Managing director Sanjay Chandra involved in 2G Spectrum Scam and was arrested on February 2nd, 2011. Though the company was had good position and good market share, it was accused by CBI for involvement in 2G Spectrum Scam. As of 2006, Unitech share price was around Rs. 1600. Today, Unitech share is around Rs. 35 only. The total profits of the company decreased from Rs 16,692 million in 2008 to Rs 6,946 million in 2010. This is a good example of big companies failing.
Subhiksha
Subhiksha was started in 1997 and it had 1600 retail outlets selling groceries, fruits, vegetables, medicines, mobile phones etc. But it was closed down in 2009 due to severe cash crunch and financial mismanagement. Mr. Azim Premji, a well-known Indian business man, invested in Subhiksha through his private investment vehicle only a few months prior to its downfall at advice of ICICI. He said that “Subhiksha was a retail equivalent of Satyam – India’s largest corporate fraud. There was an overstatement of accounts, fake inventory, fake bills, fake companies that money was transferred to”.
Also, there are some companies that run successfully with the help of political parties. But when opposition political party comes into power, they struggle to survive in the market. Sometimes they may get closed due to the lack of political patronage.
Do you want to join in this kind of companies, which will take your career nowhere? You can’t think that simplistically that all big companies are good as it could leads to wrong decision. A company that is good is a performing company that has the capabilities to adapt and overcome the challenges in its market place. Some of these performing companies are big, some are not. While many companies that are small could be performing organizations and could rapidly grow in the near future while offering great career opportunities for their employees.
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