N A S D A Q - L I S T E D Satyam Computer Services is expanding its global footprint, eyeing development centres in Russia, Vietnam and the Philippines. The company reckons it can tap the local talent pool for these centres. Besides, it would also help mitigate business risks through a global delivery model. As part of this strategy, Satyam has opened a global solutions centre in Malaysia, which can accommodate 500 people. The fourth largest software exporter from India will open another centre there by the middle of next year to house about 2,000 associates. The company already employs about 300 people in Malaysia. “Malaysia will be one of our largest software hubs outside India. We will hire about 500 people at the new facility in a year. The new centre compliments our near-shore hub here for our Asean customers,” Satyam chairman B Ramalinga Raju told ET. Currently, the company has a development centre in China and Egypt in the Asia-Pacific region. “We have four facilities in China, where we have about 500 people, while our centre in Egypt has about 100 employees. We have plans to ramp up our operations at Nanjing in China to 2,500 in future,” he said. Asia-Pacific, Middle-East, India and African regions contributed to 18% of Satyam’s revenues at the end of the first quarter this fiscal. The company expects business in this region to grow even faster than the US in the future. In the Middle-East, Satyam has facilities in several countries, including Saudi Arabia, UAE and Oman. It is also looking at South Africa as a growing domestic market for new deals particularly in government, banking, oil & gas and telecom sectors.