Unveiling MindTree Consulting's ambitious game plan before the media here on Wednesday, the firm's vice-chairman and chief operating officer, Subroto Bagchi (also an ex-Wipro man), said the start-up funded mainly by the US-based Walden International and Sivan Securities of India -- with the promoters chipping in too -- had an initial equity capital of $9.5 million (Rs 40.8 crore).

MindTree is looking at achieving critical mass with a revenue projection of $123 million by the year 2005 -- also the time frame for setting up four development centres in international locations.

MindTree, which opened shop earlier this month with offices in Bangalore and New Jersey, is selling itself as a total turnkey IS solutions provider "to drive down the total cost of ownership" - with e-commerce and telecommunications its primary focus areas.

Bagchi said the firm would deliver Net-enabled solutions including e-commerce, ERP wrap-around and front-office applications, application management services (apart from handling messy stuff like legacy applications which often bog down CIOs) and technology practice for telecommunications.

With convergence of technologies the way to go and telecommunications being the back-end of e-commerce, MindTree is placing significant emphasis on the development of a "strong telecommunications focused technology practice".

The firm will hire around 90 people this year with a targeted strength of 1,000 by 2005. Soota, who is the chairman and managing director of MindTree, said employee stock options would be offered "from the word go". He, however, declined to disclose figures.

On the pricing of its services vis-a-vis competition, Walden partner Som Shankar Das said it would be value-based rather than cost-based.

MindTree will target Fortune 1000 and middle-market companies. According to its US sales office chief Scott Staples, it has already bagged two clients in the US -- one of them a pharma major. Soota added that India would be an important market for the firm. On the plans for an initial public offering, he said MindTree would go public "at the right time".

Spastic stroke

It was a brainwave that Subroto Bagchi had which resulted in the birth of MindTree's logo. After toying with hiring design firms and ad agencies for the firm's visual identity, he thought of tapping the talents of spastic children.

Painted by a teenager suffering from cerebral palsy, KS Chetan, the logo has an interesting story behind it. It took Bagchi and his team five sessions to explain to the students of the Spastic Society of Karnataka what a logo was and what MindTree stood for. Among entries put in by the spastic kids, Chetan's was a ``powerful, blue skyward brush-stroke with bubbles of bright yellow around it.'' The lad wanted to convey ``action with imagination'' with the blue stroke while the yellow bubbles portrayed a sense of joy. The design was accepted by MindTree - with delight.