Our strategic rationale in Happiest Minds was to have disruptive technology, providing a smart, secure, connected experience enabling digital transformation.
MindTree has grown into a strong company and has a great leadership team at its helm which can continue to propel the company in the future.
I was very happy in Wipro; happier in Mindtree because I founded and took it public.
Whenever there is a recession, the first sector that bounces back is technology services.
As far as my leadership style is concerned what makes me happiest is fulfilling my potential and helping others realize theirs. If you have really done that then the rest of it is actually very simple.
We see opportunities in the networking and telecom space, including 5G, where we see accelerated investments.
Companies come to us because they think we can quickly turn around things in 3 or 5 months and that's really our sweet spot. When you're a large company, you need projects that are several hundred million worth.
I would rather be responsible and accountable and help to reward the public shareholders going ahead.
Mindtree began as an internet systems integrator when the dot-com boom was going on.
In the current world, with work-from-home emerging as a new norm, there is a spurt in demand for security, deployable across multiple work environments.
The drive for growth of education technology will further accelerate. Another key area of major growth is e-Health. The overall outlook for the industry is certainly optimistic.
The reason for looking at a public listing instead of private capital is that I have always enjoyed running a public limited company.
The customer doing something innovative is not interested in the size of your company but in whether you understand what he does.
If you see culture, to my mind it is something you need to consciously have to create. It's not like a box, where you put some input and you will get some output. In my view, it begins with the mission, vision and values.
Security incidents have gone up 5-10 times during the pandemic, so there is an increased need for security operations risk management, identity and access management, data privacy and compliance.
VCs, angels and other networks help you validate your ideas.
When the internet came up, scores of companies were created. But many of them collapsed during the dot.com bubble.
Over 10 years, MindTree has been ahead of most IT companies on operating and financial metrics. We have stayed true to our long-term vision and have not been buffeted by short-term.
Acquisitions have contributed only to 20% of MindTree's growth and 80% has come through the organic engine. Many large acquisition proposals have been turned down to ensure a proper balance was maintained.
The two main attributes of MindTree culture are high achievement orientation and high caring.
I don't subscribe to the view that talent is deteriorating. I think every generation is brighter than their previous generation.
Technology evolves continuously with solutions getting richer. For example, many of the earlier e-commerce ventures failed because of weak technology infrastructure.
