the entire story sounds like the standard (not stereotypical) SOP with indian companies. without investigating further, i immediately can conclude Saama is another one of those software outsourcing companies that for all intents and purposes, are an Indian company, but they pretend to be American or European by setting up offices in other continents so that they can shake off their Indian stink.

I'm speaking from personal experience. Several years ago, I undertook a large project worth mid 6-figures with a similar Indian outsourcing firm. The EXACT SAME THINGS happened - they overpromised on specs without even verifying with their developers if the timelines and specs were feasible, could not deliver anything of substantial value during each deliverable, kept changing the development team without informing me (which i found out from a disgruntled ex-employee of theirs later that it's because they do not actually allocate developers to a team full-time even when clients supposedly pay for FTE - full time equivalent because they cut costs by allocating employees to several teams at once), and finally when the project was "concluded", the eventual piece of software was unusable to the degree that when i applied for a US business visa based on the business that this software was used for, the consulate officer looked at the website and said "this website looks poorly built and doesn't seem like a real site. if i was just a regular customer, i wouldn't believe this was a real business." and rejected my application at least partially on that basis.

I'm still rather bitter from that experience because it cost me a lot in personal funds and was a professional stumbling block for a while, but I guess reading this article gives me a bit of catharsis knowing it wasn't just my inexperience that caused me to be fleeced by the Indians. I'm extremely averse to professional relationships with any Indian person now, because on top of that experience, all my professional interactions with Indians have never been positive. They are excellent salesmen with no integrity, they will sell you anything with no regard for whether or not they can deliver, they will promise you the world so you will pay them, but once they get your money, you will see that they are all talk and no substance. I've tried to defeat my personal biases, especially after the terrible experience with the indian company, but every single time without fail, the indian person I try to work with, whether as a potential partner in a project or as an employee, would reveal their true colors of laziness and incompetency and often even dishonesty.

The company I worked with in India is called Icreon. DO NOT WORK WITH THEM. They used the exact same tactics as Saama, they claim to work extensively with companies like National Geographic, HBO, etc but they're probably all failed projects that did not come to fruition. Looking at their site now, they are also employing the exact same strategy of trying to minimize their Indian roots, when in fact they are 100% Indian through and through. The simple fact that they're doing this should tell you a lot.