Ashok Soota seems to be a happy mind these days and not just because of his new firm Happiest Minds. The former chairman of MindTree is now severing himself slowly from the company, which he helped set up in 1999, along with his best pal and ex-Wipro colleague Subroto Bagchi. On Thursday when he decided to offload 5.5% of his 11% stake in MindTree, it just showed why he is a happier mind today after having exited his earlier venture this January.

As we all know his last few months at MindTree were not the greatest, with the company slipping from the pedestal it once adorned with great pride. Post the stake sale, he is richer by nearly $21 million, while also bagging in the process, two of his former colleagues Raja Shanmugham and K Venkatesan. Happiest Minds is all set to start operations in September and Soota, seen as a software general of sorts in IT circles, may decide not to hold back any punches.

When he quit MindTree he sent shock waves across the industry and people wondered near water coolers how MindTree could possibly function without its brightest and mightiest brain. Announcing his resignation, he had sent a mail to the media. ?The decision to resign is for personal reasons. It is something I have thought about for a few months and arrived at a well-considered conclusion. I will finalise and announce my plans for a new business venture, shortly after my departure from MindTree,? the 68-year-old Soota had said then. It was difficult to believe at that time that Soota would indeed start a new IT firm. Not only did he start a new venture as he promised, but he has also started to rope in the right people from the right places.

Shanmugham, who used to head MindTree foundation, joined Happiest Minds earlier this month as chief people officer. He was the chief of the Mindtree Foundation, a not-for-profit arm of MindTree which worked in the primary education space and helped the differently-abled people through assistive technologies. Before that, he used to head MindTree?s operations in the Asia Pacific region. Venkatesan, who also joined Happiest Minds in the first week of June as its finance controller, has a MindTree connection as well. He was one of the earliest employees of MindTree and was there with the company till its IPO in 2008. After that, he joined Team Lease, a staffing firm, as head of finance.

It will be very interesting to see how Soota gives shape to his new baby. It will be equally interesting to see how MindTree copes with this loss in the medium term. Soota?s exit had come at a difficult time for MindTree, which had aspirations of becoming a $1-billion entity by 2014/15. However, MindTree?s inability to capitalise on the acquisition of the captive R&D unit of Kyocera Wireless had resulted in a huge setback for the company. The $300 million firm may have to now settle for some scaled down ambitions and also sit tight on its finances for sometime.

Next trick up the Facebook sleeve

Tech circles are abuzz with the news that Facebook is about to launch a new feature this week. Bloggers have been trying to anticipate what that would be and many believe the innovation could come about in the mobile or tablet space. The rumour mills set off after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told reporters in Seattle on Wednesday that the company was about to launch ?something awesome?.

While one report suggested that it would be the unveiling of the official Facebook iPad application, someone else hinted that it could be a photo sharing application.

Watch this space, folks.

Justin enters a new space

In the Academy award winning movie The Social Network Justin Timberlake had essayed the role of Sean Parker, the founder of Napster, who helped Mark Zuckerberg raise funding for Facebook. But looks like Justin wants to do more with social networking and this time in real life. The singer turned actor has picked up an ownership stake in MySpace, the ailing social networking firm, and will leads its business strategy. This has led to some guffaws, but some say that Justin is quite serious about his new move.

News Corp will retain a minority stake in Myspace after having put up the network up for sale earlier this year. When MySpace was bought over by News Corp for $580 million in 2005, analysts had given the deal a thumbs up. But now it is being sold to Timberlake and Specific Media for a meagre $35 million. Phew, how the scene change in a few years.

Says Timberlake, ?Art is inspired by people and vice versa, so there?s a natural social component to entertainment. I am excited to help revitalise Myspace by using its social media platform to bring artists and fans together in one community.?

Talk about getting inspired by a role!