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Then came Hindustan Lever - Unilever’s India subsidiary. As we were getting started, Ashok walked in one day and declared, "We must do business with Levers." When Ashok says something, he means what he says.
The same day, he wrote to Keki Dadiseth, the then Chairman of Hindustan Lever - who sent the mail to D. Sundaram, Director Finance. Sundaram was at that time putting together a team with the charter to e-enable Hindustan Lever as part of their millennial initiatives.

Sundaram asked us to meet K. Ramesh who had just moved from their culinary business to steer this team. In Ramesh’s Brookfield Office, when my colleague Puneet Jetli and I stood to present MindTree, we were acutely aware of how small and naked we were. What if Ramesh asked for case studies and customer references? What if he asked us to show ISO certification and process maturity?

Ramesh asked us none of these questions. He said he had read about the Making of MindTree in BusinessWorld and admired us for who we were. He did say that since we were industry veterans, he had some doubts on whether we would be able to roll up our sleeves and work in a hands-on manner. But he also said that the names behind MindTree were associated with unimpeachable integrity, and so, he would go with us. From what started as a one day engagement with their mid level managers to educate them on e-business basics, we grew to build a big business in e-integration, data warehousing and supply chain management in India, China, Japan, South East Asia and Australia.

MindTree House is Built...

While customer acquisition was happening at a fast pace, we needed to build physical infrastructure - the office lent to us by Siddhartha was, after all, only good for 14 people. So we all looked around and settled for a lease of a new structure that the Brigade Group of Bangalore was constructing. It was a bare concrete structure.

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Subroto Bagchi is co-founder and Chief Operating Officer for MindTree Consulting (P) Ltd. The "Making of the MindTree" is told in the first person by Subroto Bagchi. In condensed form, it was published by Business World, filmed by InfiniTV, and aired on CNBC, IT Hour. Websites: www.mindtree.com & www.mindtree.com/subrotobagchi