Ramalinga Raju founded Satyam Computers in 1987 with 20 employees. It grew to become a large, multinational IT services company with over 50,000 employees in 66 countries by 2008. However, in January 2009 it was revealed that Raju had committed accounting fraud, overstating revenues and inflating cash balances by billions of rupees. This scandal had widespread negative impacts, causing stock prices to plummet and losses for shareholders, while putting many jobs at risk. Eventually Tech Mahindra acquired Satyam and merged it to form a new company.