Previous

Page - 9

While Avis was beginning to take shape in the US, one day, we received an unexpected visit from Chuck Johnson, Co-President of Franklin Templeton Investments and their CIO Allen Gula.

Both were on a visit to India and were doing the big company routine when V. G. Siddhartha of Global Technology Ventures suggested that they meet MindTree as an example of the newer breed of IT services company. Both men agreed and when they did stop by, Chuck and Al were intrigued by our culture and went back to suggest to Richard Preece and Sandeep Bhatia in their IT Department that they give us a try. Richard and Sandeep were in the process of collapsing 36 huge but disparate applications into one and their vision was to make it fully available on the Internet so that Franklin Templeton could connect with its 10,000 customer service representatives and end users all over the world.

Sandeep, himself an ex-PricewaterhouseCoopers consultant, keeps high standards for himself and for those who work for him. What followed from that point on was a long relationship and we built Franklin Templeton's global web site project. At its peak, the Project had close to a hundred MindTree Minds working 24/7 from across two continents. When Franklin Templeton gave us the assignment, they did not ask us if we knew the mutual fund industry. They were not worried about whether we would be around a year, two years, or three years. They had faith and trust in the people of MindTree - something that Sandeep talked to me about long after we completed the assignment.

In India, our first customer was Fabmart. V. S. Sudhakar, the aspiring Jeff Bezos of India, was already up and running with Fabmart by the time we opened shop. His current service provider was not scaling and he handed over his site to us on a platter.

Next

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