The Emergency Management and Research Institute (EMRI), the brainchild of Satyam founder B Ramalinga Raju, that runs the 108 ambulance services has found a new partner to fund its activities.
“The formalities would be completed in a week,” EMRI CEO Venkat Changavalli told Business Standard. He, however, said the name of the partner would be disclosed on April 27, exactly 108 days after Raju confessed to the accounting fraud.
The new partner would provide Rs 45-50 crore a year. The amount will be used to meet the leadership and research costs. This apart, the new partner would be required to provide funding of another Rs 60 crore to make up for the Rs 60 crore that Raju promised to give last year but did not. In all, it is expecting about Rs 105-110 crore from the new partner.
EMRI was forced to look out for a new partner after Raju preferred to stay out of the institute's ambit. According to Changavalli, Raju had called him a day before he made shocking disclosures about the financial scam at Satyam on January 7 and informed that he would resign from the EMRI board. Incidentally, Raju's counsel sought a bail for him on the grounds that he was to attend to EMRI activities. "May be, he wanted to advise EMRI voluntarily,'' Changavalli said stressing that Raju was no longer associated with EMRI.
EMRI was started four years ago with Raju giving Rs 34 crore in the first year, sufficient to run the operation for two years. Later, Raju donated another Rs 42 crore that supported its activities for a year.
Speaking on the sidelines of signing a memorandum of understanding with Osmania University here on Thursday, he said: "We were showered with undeserved criticism. Many people said EMRI would not survive. The salaries and careers of over 13,000 employees were at stake."
EMRI currently operates in nine states and serves 370 million people. It is targeting to reach out to 1 billion people in phases and has so far saved 70,000 lives. The nine partner states provided Rs 100 crore as their contribution in the last three months. These states have continued with the 108 services even after the Satyam scam broke out, he said.
Changavalli said Carnegie Mellon University faculty Raj Reddy, who is on the boards of both EMRI and Tech Mahindra, had already spoken to the management of Tech Mahindra, which has deposited the required money for buying a majority stake in Satyam, for continuing technology support as Satyam did earlier. There is no cost burden on EMRI till 2011 according to the agreement with Satyam.
Ambulance services apart, EMRI is looking to build employment opportunities in the field of healthcare by offering specialised training programmes.
On the allegations that EMRI was mounting pressure on the paramedics and ambulance staff to bring in a specified number of cases every day, he said there was no profit motive attached. "We only want more people to use the service to justify the government spending on it,'' he said. The staff have been asked to canvass in rural areas about the facility so that more people, particularly would-be mothers, use the services.
