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After that, he joined the R&D at Wipro and grew up as an Operating Systems expert. He was one of the handful of people who were hired by Microsoft in the early eighties when Microsoft had come looking for talent from India for the very first time.
A right thinking consul at the US Consulate had at that time, decided Partha's destiny by declining him the visa to the US. Thank God for such people! Despite two subsequent, longish opportunities to work in the US on behalf of Wipro, Partha never subsequently considered working for any US company or settling down in the US. Dozens of unsolicited offers routinely poured in every year, as he would dutifully pull out a Maruti 800 car from his middle class, Sanjay Nagar House every morning to drive to his work at Wipro.

He was one of the handful of R&D engineers at Wipro who had seen through the transformation of Wipro's R&D from a domestically focused inward looking cost center, to an international lab-on-hire. People like Partha made Wipro what it is today. Behind the spectacular stock market performance of one of India's most admired companies are people like Partha whose world was untouched by the dizzy market capitalization of the corporation. Partha was a technology whiz kid and an outstanding people manager. Partha headed the 200-person development center Wipro ran for Lucent Technologies and dreamt of an opportunity to go and teach at a second tier engineering college someday. If only destiny permitted!

Destiny is strange. We spoke to two technology experts to join us. One agreed whole-heartedly but quickly dropped off. The other took time to think over, but came for the long ride anyway. But that is what enterprise is all about.

The drive to Vizag was an insane decision. We had, like in any well meaning software development project, grossly underestimated the time the trip would take. We left Bangalore at 5 PM on December 23^rd and reached only at 1 AM on December 25^th.

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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