Industry veteran and former executive chairman of MindTree Ashok Soota, who announced setting up of his new venture, Happiest Minds Technologies, says he would leverage new technologies to differentiate. Soota speaks to FE?s Goutam Das on the start-up firm and the way forward.
Right from the name of the new venture, to the service lines and to some of the things you mentioned about cloud and new technologies, it echoes what MindTree?s management has also been taking about. Are you hitting back at MindTree?
Not at all. Absolutely not. What does a late stage entrant do? I have to be in a business that I know; I will have to start a company in an area which I know well and I must frame strategies which are suitable at that time. The competition is not A, B, or C company. There are certain trends in the industry which everybody must pick up. So, it is not surprising that you heard it from the company you named.
Your service lines appear to be a copy-paste of MindTree?s. What is it you can do in the new venture that you couldn?t do at MindTree?
I would not like to make comparisons here. What we need to see is whether the market space exists for a new company today and how would that company set itself to be different. You can be a niche company or a broad scale player. We are certainly not setting out to be a niche company. My core competence is in creating large companies. The way to do that is to have multiple lines of offerings. The second aspect is that if you want large accounts, you have to have a multiplicity of offerings. Any other comparisons are only coincidental. As we start today, where are the differentiators? Those differentiators are built in the basic architecture of the company ? it is built on the premise that happiest people will lead to happiest customers. We will have prototype solutions being created. Those solutions will integrate three dimensions. Normally, people talk of domain as a technology domain or a practice. We will introduce a third dimension which is the workflow aspect.
Can you take us through the process of forming this new company? When did you first think about it?
The why of the past I have already covered. I have said personal reasons, it was destiny. The past is over. The issue now is what is it that we are going to do differently? That thought process is in my mind. I will flesh this out as we build the team ahead. The process of organisation building begins today.
Why are you not considering an acquisition to start with?
The private equity people said that money is no constraint ?why don’t I take a large amount of money and start with an acquisition? The VCs don’t have an expectation of that because they fund start-ups. I am not keen on starting with an acquisition. I want to build our own culture.
There were some rumours that you might get into the education sector. Did you consider it?
Within MindTree itself, I know KK (Krishnakumar Natarajan) has been very keen on it. But it is a different market altogether. Our solutions are all addressed towards the enterprise. People say that the same domain workflow could get customised to one industry or the other. That wouldn?t apply to education.