LUNCH WITH BS: Ashok Soota

You make your own luck

Ashok Soota

MindTree's founder on how he's building upon the string of lucky coincidences in his life.

For a successful techie, it is remarkable how much credit Ashok Soota is willing to give to "coincidence" or "luck". Early in his career, he got a lucky break by being posted in Sri Lanka, which catapulted him to the top management of a small firm. It gave him "breadth, an idea of how to run the show very early in life". This was to stand him in good stead when he set out to launch and run MindTree Consulting, now considered an outstanding success story among firms started at the fag end of the dotcom boom, many of whom have disappeared, writes Business Standard.

The second stroke of luck came when a batchmate from Roorkee, with whom he has resumed contact a few months earlier after 20 years, met Azim Premji. He was looking for someone to head a computer company but did not have to be a computer man, and Soota's name popped up. "Where would I have ever sought out a job like this?" There he remained for 15 years until the time came to venture out on his own and set up MindTree.

The third coincidence occurred when Soota visited a venture capital fund in Silicon Valley, looking for support to start an Internet services firm. The venture capitalists asked if they could put him in touch with others working on a similar idea. And would you believe it, said the expression on Soota's face, in precisely a week, the eight co-founders of the firm, including Subroto Bagchi, had come together, all having independently done the homework for such a venture. "It was like a marriage made in heaven," feels Soota. "More than anything else, coincidences influence things, but you certainly make a bit of your own luck."

The fourth and, perhaps, the most critical break came when the then fledgling MindTree received its second round of funding days before September 11. The view that you also shape your own luck stems from the fact that MindTree's founders started restrategising the moment the "Internet bust came and had seen some of the storm clouds gathering." So they had done some preparation for the telecom bust ahead. This had made the firm "one of the few successful post Internet IT services companies "" perhaps the sole survivor "" of the two air pockets "" Internet and telecom busts."

Soota attributes his journey forward partly to the adaptability he acquired as a peripatetic army officer's son who had to change school all of 12 times in as many years! Hence, he is not fussy about what he can eat when he is travelling, which is over 100 days in a year: "I experiment with everything."

If he can, while travelling abroad, he goes for Mexican food, which is the closest to Indian food but avoids what passes for Indian food since it is usually terrible. While in India, among continental cuisine, he prefers Italian, but minus the cheese, which is what we go in for at the nicely styled Fiorano Ristorante in Bangalore's busy Koramangala area. He orders grilled tuna, minus the lemon butter, with fresh vegetables. I opt for grilled prawns.

What he is particular about is, is taking his daily walk. He carries his walking shoes with him during travels and unlike most, is not put off by long waits between flights at international airports. He just dons his walking shoes and traverses the endless walkways that modern airports are made up of.

After rapidly changing its business focus post-dotcom bust from Internet services to a range of horizontal offerings in IT services and vertical industry specialisation in R&D services, MindTree spent the next two years "hanging on". But today, after achieving a $100 million topline in the first six years, MindTree is making bold, looking at the "logical milestone of a billion dollars that we must articulate in the next five or six years".

The founders' composition allowed MindTree to offer a unique mix right from the beginning "" low-cost Indian skills plus the consulting skills of its founding members from Cambridge Technology Partners. "We began exactly where the industry is heading today," asserts Soota, adding without undue modesty, "this is going to be the model for the future," the one which leading Indian software companies are adopting today.

How has MindTree consistently made it to all best employers' lists in the past few years? It is the first IT company that offers stock options to all. Besides, "We communicate more, share with the entire organisation strategy documents going to the board, and we have women-friendly policies." MindTree is also famous for using drawings by spastics children for the interiors of its Banashankari head office. "We call it the happiest software facility in the world." Unsurprisingly, it has an attrition rate of 11 per cent, about half the industry average.

To reach the magic figure of a billion dollars, MindTree will have to grow by at least double the industry average. Soota is unfazed since it has been doing that already and is set to reach its long-term target of $231 million by 2008, which works out to a compound annual growth rate of 50 per cent plus.

The intellectual equipment for this will come from "developing our share of intellectual property and building blocks, which improve productivity." MindTree already has a respectable though modest IP portfolio. Eight per cent of its engineering services sales come from IP and 30 per cent of its services revenue is relatable to its IP. Recently it has signed two royalty-based IP deals, one of them with Japan's NEC, which has "high potential".

We end our lunch with chocolate mud cake, which is quite sweet. But Soota has a clear idea of Bengali taste buds, having worked in Kolkata for several years and done his farewell round not pub hopping but mishti-shop hopping.