Satyam Computer Services Limited on Monday announced two significant appointments for Nipuna Services Ltd, its BPO subsidiary.

Prakash Challa has been named the new CEO of Nipuna, while Sandeep Madan will assume responsibility as the COO.

Challa was appointed as COO of Nipuna in October 2003. Since then, Nipuna has grown in size and has added a significant number of clients and services to its portfolio.

"As CEO, Prakash Challa will be responsible for building Nipuna as one of the top providers of end-to-end BPO services to various industry sectors globally," said B Rama Raju, Managing Director, Satyam.

Challa will focus on ensuring that Nipuna's customers are provided with the value-added services that they need, which will help them realise their business objectives and improve their competitive positioning. He will be based in Atlanta, US.

Before joining Nipuna, Challa was with Satyam as senior vice president in the global solutions group. Prior to that, he held several senior management positions in the information technology industry.

While with IMR Global / CGI in US (since 1993), he held a number of senior management positions and was responsible for business development and operations.

Starting his career with Wipro Information Technology in 1985 he later joined Tata Consultancy Services and held numerous leadership positions in Quality, Information Systems and Technology Planning groups.

Challa has a Ph.D in Software Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India.

"We are happy to welcome Sandeep Madan to the Satyam family. With his rich knowledge and sound experience in managing the affairs of companies of global stature, we look forward to him engaging the same level of energy and intellect for the benefit of Nipuna," Rama Raju added.

Madan was president at HeroITES, the BPO venture of the Hero Group, before he joined Nipuna. Under his leadership as the overall business leader, HeroITES grew rapidly from about 650 to over 1,300 employees in a very short period.

His experience in the BPO/ITES industry covers GECIS (GE Capital International Services) and Capital One. At Capital One, as director, India operations, he led their back-office outsourcing initiatives in India.

While at GECIS, he worked in client relationship/business development in Gurgaon and then moved to Hyderabad to set-up and lead GECIS's largest service delivery unit. He also had additional responsibility for facilities, logistics and infrastructure at the GECIS Hyderabad site.

Earlier, Madan has held several senior management positions in the telecom and information technology industries.

He has worked at AT&T India and HCL in diverse geographical and market environments and has a rich cross-functional exposure to sales, product management, marketing, customer support, logistics, etc.

An alumnus of IIT-Bombay, Madan completed his BTech. in Mechanical Engineering in 1985. Subsequently, he has gone through several management and marketing programs including an intense short-term management development programme at XLRI, Jamshedpur.

Nipuna Services Limited is the BPO subsidiary of Satyam Computer Services. Nipuna's interest is to be a long term partner addressing all aspects of the outsourcing requirement of clients.

Nipuna  gives 'businesses going BPO' the very best in bringing cost efficiency with quality processes, round-the-clock operations, matchless infrastructure and a committed people force, by offshoring the clients' critical, but non-core areas of operations to India.

Nipuna, services 14 global clients out of its centers in Hyderabad, Bangalore and New Jersey, US. It offers Industry specific services to customers in the insurance and healthcare sector services like claims processing, policy issuance, and premium accounting, etc. It also offers the front office services like contact centers for customer service, product support & technical help desk services as well as back-office processes in the areas of accounting, HR and other transaction intensive activities, including analytics and animation.