Reinventing Mindtree

We were fortunate to speak to one of the co-founders of Mindtree, Mr. Parthasarathy. He is a charismatic, dynamic, extremely intelligent and frank person. He has played a prominent role during the IT boom in India. Mindtree is one of the prominent IT services company in India and is of special interest because of its ongoing rebranding and internal restructuring processes. Mindtree is fairly a new company compared to Infosys and TCS, however, the company’s leaders have identified the need to revamp the way company competes and operates in order to suit the changing global business realm.

Strategy is always dynamic and is about choice. Mindtree has chosen to exit few markets and concentrate only in a few markets and in few areas. The focus is on developing expertise among ‘Mindtree Minds’ (this is how employees are called in Mindtree) rather than nurturing general managers. Mindtree aspires to become project makers rather than project takers. The challenges of restructuring are enormous and require change in KPAs and the way employees are evaluated. These are particularly difficult in developing markets with high attrition rates. We also learned that most of the founders would be exiting the company and succession plan is in the making. This is particularly interesting since Infosys, Indian IT leader, had a not so successful succession process. Indian IT industry has immense opportunities and potential, however, China is a major threat in future years. I wish Mindtree successfully transforms and repositions itself in the changing global scenario.