Revival in demand for technology seems to have missed mid-tier offshoring firm Mastek last quarter, even as its bigger rivals announced faster-than-expected growth during the earnings season. Chairman and managing director Sudhakar Ram, however, is confident of kicking in growth in the next two quarters. Primarily focused on insurance and government sectors, Mastek is banking on its domain expertise and IP creation.Currently, Sudhakar is busy identifying new parameters to define new beliefs and assumptions that belong to the connected age for his new book ?New Constructs of the New World?. ?The fundamental constructs or beliefs and assumptions we hold today were created for the Industrial Age,? he says. The New Constructs would extensively use the tools of a connected age like Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter and Youtube to connect and grow the community. In a chat with Pragati Verma, Sudhakar describes his company?s strategy for growth and his forthcoming collaborative book. Excerpts:

While bigger offshoring companies talked of revival, Mastek disappointed last month. What are your clients telling you about tech spend in 2010?

For Mastek, the revival will come a couple of quarters later. We expect it to kick in from our next fiscal which starts in July. We added five new clients and we have seen an order book uptick. While we were able to significantly strengthen order backlog, we are still witnessing longer-than-normal sales cycles.

I think we are well positioned for the long term as we are focused on high-end vertical enterprise solutions. We currently operate in the public sector and government verticals and will get into wealth management and healthcare at an appropriate time. Indian companies now need domain-expertise, intellectual property and high-level relationships to play a strategic role for clients. And I believe that our focus on IP will pay off as third wave of outsourcing sets in.

What are these three waves of offshoring?

During the first wave in the Indian IT industry, the paradigm of Indian software professionals was equivalent to that of a components supplier in industrial age. This was when Indian companies adopted the body shopping or staff augmentation route to establish that Indian programmers were competent and could deliver. We were the first company to launch two of its own application products for financial accounting and stock broking. Next we started building one of the first ERP systems in the world. Our insurance enterprise platform was also developed during this phase.

The second phase of tech boom saw a plethora of US companies like Motorola, Nortel and GE setting up R&D centres in India. They partneredwith local Indian software firms to set up local offshore development centres. Industry saw significant growth as Y2K established India as a programming destination where parts of project could be done cost-efficiently, thanks to Indian companies quality processes and systems. We took a different route and invested in a range of technologies like client server, internet and CRM. The prestigious London Congestion Charging project was also initiated during this period, which has today enabled the UK government generate over ?100 million in revenues. The program was successful in reducing congestion in London by around 20%.

How prepared are Indian companies for the third wave?

Now the stage is set for the next level of evolution, where we go beyond labour arbitrage and the linear model. Indian companies need to develop IP to tap into the new opportunity. Some are working on acquiring IP, while others have got into consulting to play a strategic role in client?s business. They are also experimenting with new business models like software as a service. Our intellectual property and strategic focus on chosen domains will create a differentiator in the third wave.

You are writing a collaborative book to explore new ideas and paradigms for the connected age. Which constructs, in your opinion, need re-invention?

Our lives are ruled by a set of beliefs and assumptions?I call them ?constructs??that drive our attitudes and actions. These seven constructs are success, learning, work, consumption, wellness, governance, and globalisation. We have been acclimated to accept what the Industrial Age tells us is normal for each of those constructs. But these deeply rooted constructs have become constraints. We need new constructs to help us take the next leap forward in history. For instance, our definition of success is unidimensional. Just GDP growth or other such markers, whether at an individual, corporate or national level, doesn?t mean that everyone is happy. We need to relook at success.

Take sustainability. Studies show that over 60% of the earth?s ecosystem has been degraded or used unsustainably. It is clear that our current way of life is unsustainable on this planet. If the trend continues, the planet is literally going to be too small for us.

Despite all this information and awareness, global leaders have been slow to address the looming problems. So, do we need another body which could work independent of world governments?

Similarly, we need to relook at currency. Would the world be a better place if we had a single currency? This could be similar to the old gold standard or Euro.

Do you also plan to practice what you are preaching here?

I am exploring possibilities in the field of education. The current system seems to working on the principals of as assembly line. We have not changed our basic approach of teaching children in the last 200 years. Project Zero at Harvard discovered that almost all children are at genius level up to age of four years. They tested them on multiple frames of intelligence?spatial, kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, mathematical, intrapersonal, and linguistic. They discovered that genius level proportion dropped to 2% by the time they are 20 years old. Are we educating children to take intelligence out of them?

I have studied various teaching methodologies and am personally impressed with the Montessori system. We are trying to work on it and set up a new education system that is child-friendly. We will look at setting up schools or, maybe, work with existing schools who want to adopt the new age content.