We are in expansion phase, says Soota

MindTree Consulting, including Linc Software which it has acquired, aims to grow its topline by 45 per cent this fiscal, Ashok Soota, chairman and managing director of the IT services firm told reporters here on Thursday.

For the year to March 2005, MindTree posted revenues of $55 million and Linc did $7 million, Soota said. "Combined, we expect to fully touch revenues of $90 million," he said.

"We have always grown at double the industry rate and for the year to March 2005, we grew almost three times the industry rate," Soota said. For fiscal 2006, "We again expect to do nearly double the industry's growth. We are in an expansion mode," he said.

The growth will come from both new geographies and businesses in IT services, and by exploiting intellectual property (IP) as a "driver for business" in MindTree's research and development services portfolio, Soota said.

During fiscal 2005, "IP contributed about 15 per cent directly to our business, but the knowledge we gained in building that IP brought in another 30 per cent of the R&D services business," he said.

MindTree will continue to invest in keeping its R&D services lead in areas like Bluetooth, a short distance wireless technology, and build expertise in new ones.

They will include Wimax, a new wireless communications standard and ultra wide band, a technology that is seeing applications in an increasing number of areas such as biomedicine, radars and communication systems.

Last year, MindTree doubled its staff strength to 2,000, which has since risen to 2,200.

"We are expanding our facility at the Global Village campus" on Mysore Road and we will be able to add another 1,300, Soota said.

During fiscal 2005, the firm also opened new development centres, including one in Hyderabad. It was actively looking at "some locations in South East Asia too". All these made for again doubling the staff strength to over 5,000, he said.

Krishnakumar Natarajan, MindTree's president and chief executive officer of the firm's IT services business, said, "We find that large organisations are increasingly looking to work with firms that can pay more attention to them." Such customers are more comfortable working with mid-size IT companies, he said.

During the year to March, the company strengthened relationships with existing customers like American International Group, US' largest life insurer, Swedish truck-maker Volvo and Anglo-Dutch consumer goods company Unilever.