“Clients will ask for certificates of financial compliance and reaffirmation of the credibility of companies’ financial statements,” predicted Partha Iyengar, head of research at Gartner India.

The Satyam fiasco will undermine the credibility of the India’s outsourcing firms, especially where customer relationships are new and not very strong, said Bangalore-based Anand Lavi, a partner at Virginia-based advisory firm, Tholons.

The beleaguered Satyam, with clients such as Coca-Cola, General Electric and Nissan Motor, is meanwhile being sued in several US class-action lawsuits. A class action lawsuit is filed on behalf of a large group of people collectively bringing a claim to court.

Workers in the outsourcing industry, already hit by pink slips after the Wall Street meltdown and an economic slowdown, are now faced with a further crisis. Many are asking whether Satyam can afford to pay salaries after Raju confessed that he had inflated the balance sheet showing non-existent company cash reserves of Rs 50.4 billion.

Meanwhile, leading outsourcing companies are busy reassuring their customers that they can be trusted to deliver. HCL Technologies which is now the fourth-largest outsourcing firm after Satyam’s debacle, said its chief executive Vineet Nayar had been communicating with key customers and employees to reinforce HCL’s commitment to sound corporate governance practices.

As outsourcing companies realise, it is not just their own credibility that is at stake but also that of Indian outsourcing as a brand.