Netflix Closes A Long Chapter With Ramalinga Raju’s Story — Revisiting the Satyam Scam

Netflix has finally managed to get off the tiger. More than fifteen years after it shook India’s corporate world, the Satyam scandal has returned to the spotlight. Netflix has finally released 'Riding the Tiger', the fourth and last episode of Bad Boy Billionaires India, bringing to an end a prolonged legal and cultural standoff around one of the country’s most infamous business collapses.

The episode centres on B. Ramalinga Raju, founder of Satyam Computer Services, and arrives nearly five years after it was originally meant to air.

When Bad Boy Billionaires India debuted on Netflix in October 2020, it featured episodes on Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi and Subrata Roy. The release of Riding the Tiger completes the series, which charts the downfall of some of India’s most powerful business figures.

The Raju episode was pulled at the last minute after he moved a Hyderabad civil court, arguing that the documentary presented selective facts that could harm his reputation and influence pending legal proceedings.

An interim stay followed, freezing the episode’s release. Netflix contested the move, stating in court filings that the series was built on publicly available records, investigative reporting and legal documents.

The dispute lingered for years, turning the unreleased episode into a kind of unfinished business, until now.

Often dubbed 'India’s Enron,' the Satyam scandal was not a sudden implosion but a slow erosion. Founded in 1987, Satyam rose alongside India’s IT outsourcing boom, winning global clients and investor trust. On paper, it appeared flush with cash and profitability.

In reality, Raju later admitted that cash balances had been overstated by more than $1.5 billion (around Rs 7,000 crore).

In January 2009, Ramalinga Raju stunned markets by writing a confession letter to Satyam’s board and regulators. He admitted that the company’s accounts had been falsified for years.

The key revelations included:

• Cash and bank balances overstated

• Inflated revenues and profits, created through fake invoices

• Non-existent interest income, shown on cash that never existed

• Underreported liabilities, masking the company’s true financial position

The title comes from a line in Raju’s 2009 confession letter, written when the fraud finally unravelled.

He described Satyam’s growing gap between reported profits and actual numbers as 'riding a tiger,' a situation where escape becomes impossible without destruction.

That metaphor anchors the documentary. Instead of treating the scam as a single moment of collapse, the episode traces how small manipulations accumulated over time, until the company — and its founder — were trapped by their own narrative.

In the Netflix episode, former employees, journalists and financial experts recount lapses in a governance structure that relied too heavily on trust.

The manipulation went on for years without being flagged by auditors, independent directors, or regulators.

Several factors contributed — weak internal controls within the company, over-reliance on management disclosures, audit failures, where forged bank statements and confirmations went unquestioned. Also present was high trust in the IT sector, which was seen as professionally run and transparent.

The documentary also revisits the aftermath — including the scramble to stabilise the company, protect jobs and reassure clients.

Eventually, Tech Mahindra stepped in, acquiring Satyam, rebranding it as Mahindra Satyam, and later merging it fully into its own operations. The rescue prevented a total collapse but did little to soften the reputational damage.

The Satyam episode stands apart because of its timing and impact. Unlike cases driven by personal excess or aggressive borrowing, Satyam exposed systemic weaknesses. Its fallout led to tighter disclosure norms, sharper scrutiny of auditors, and a broader reckoning with corporate governance in India.

For older investors, it is a reminder of a scandal that shattered complacency around blue-chip names.

For younger viewers, encountering it for the first time, Riding the Tiger offers a sobering lesson that in business, the most dangerous failures are rarely sudden.