Any big investor exit won't affect Mindtree, says CEO Rostow Ravanan

Speculations are rife about the possible exit of Mindtree's largest investor and Café Coffee Day (CCD) founder V G Siddhartha, but the IT services firm’s chief executive officer and managing director Rostow Ravanan is unperturbed.

According to Ravanan, also a co-founder of Mindtree, Siddhartha is one among the 80,000 investors and the functioning of the firm will not be impacted in case he exits.

“We have some 80,000 shareholders as of today and some obviously are very large, like CCD,” Ravanan told Business Standard in a recent interview. "What Siddhartha buys or sells is his decision. What we can do is that we insulate Mindtree from any shareholders' changes."

According to a media report, global private equity major KKR & Co has evinced interest to buy out Siddhartha’s entire stake. This, however, could not be verified independently.  

Siddhartha, who first invested in the IT firm way back in 1999, currently holds 26 per cent in Mindtree through his various entities. His exit as an independent director of Mindtree in March led to the buzz of an impending stake sale, which Siddhartha has been denying.

“You see Siddhartha’s track record. He first invested in 1999 and from then to now, he has only sold 1.5 per cent. I don't know why suddenly there is so much of anxiety,” Ravanan said.

A lot of large investors exited after Mindtree's listing on the bourses. After its public float in 2007, Capital was its largest investor. Capital sold its entire stake of around 11 per cent in 2008-09. Similarly, the company’s second-largest shareholder Walden International sold its stake in 2009-10. “Nothing happened to Mindtree (then), and we continued to focus on our business,” Ravanan said.

Mindtree, Ravanan said, has got a lot of block deals in the past one year. "Whenever you are on the field, you play with the eye on the ball. The moment, you play with eye on the scoreboard, you lose the ball. For me, my ball is customers and people," he said.

In an earlier interview, the firm’s co-founder and executive chairman Krishnakumar Natarajan had said that even if the stake sale by Siddhartha happens, it would be in a well-managed manner. "What we are absolutely clear that he will not do anything which will harm the company," Natarajan had said.

Mindtree, which has already posted revenue of $488 million in the first half of this financial year, is likely to achieve $1 billion revenue mark in the current financial year. In the quarter ended September, digital services accounted for around 50 per cent of Mindtree’s overall revenues of $246.4 million.