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I used to admire the young Anjan for his capabilities and his huge modesty. Son of an illustrious Army General, Anjan was one of those people who customers loved at first sight. Whenever I saw him, I felt we had to have a shared destiny from some point.

Anjan left India in 1989 and went to Florida to do his MBA, where he topped his class. Then he joined a consulting company that eventually merged with Cambridge Technology Partners and Anjan went on to be very successful there. Anjan and his young bride Purba came to see me at my relative's house. They had moved in to their new house a week back and insisted that I must spend a night with them. Anjan threw in an irresistible line to get me to agree - "there is a wooden deck in the house, overlooking a meadow that blends in to the woods. Early in the morning, as you sip tea on the deck, you can see deer that flock out of the woods and come to the meadow". The deal was made.

Next morning, sitting together with Anjan, I asked him to explain his work to me. Cambridge Technology Partners is a world leader in methodology driven "Rapid Application Development" in the client server domain. They were the first company to break the myth that any application development for a Fortune 500 company was necessarily an eighteen-month affair. Using a strong, consensus driven approach, Cambridge could establish a $600 million practice in the IT solutions space.

Soon, we were discussing life script issues. Anjan was doing extremely well in his work and had not yet nurtured any plans to leave Cambridge. Neither did he nurse ambitions to strike out on his own. Having listened to him, it was my turn to share my dreams. I explained the philosophy to Anjan. He was fascinated with the dream to create a truly solutions driven, truly international company. He was even more fascinated with the idea of making an up-front social commitment to change the face of one government school every year.

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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