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When he passed school, his father had a small pool of money from his hard earned saving set aside. He called Scott and told him that the pool was good to see him through the first year of college. After that, Scott would have to fend for himself. Scott told his father that he better save that pool for his siblings and that he would work his way through. Scott did that.

Below his resume, even today, under the heading "Other Accomplishments", Scott writes "100% financed myself through college". When we first met in a period restaurant off route 287 in New Jersey, I asked Scott his prime motivation for starting a company, now that he was one of the best billed Sales Managers of Cambridge Technology Partners. He gave me an astounding reason. He said, "Remember when I used to paint people's windows? At the end of a hard day, I would look at my work and reflect 'wow, I did that'. Somewhere I have left that satisfaction, that pride and above all, that stamp of Quality behind. I want to be part of a group that is small enough for us to look at the window and be able to say wow, we done it." After listening to me, Scott agreed to join in as a founder.

Rostow Ravanan loves his name. People invariably ask him to explain it. Rostow's grandfather was a freedom fighter and an atheist. He named his children after "anti-Gods" if you will. Thus, Rostow's dad was named "Ravanan". Somehow, Rostow's father did not become an atheist but the name stayed. When he had two sons, he picked up an international theme instead. Rostow, the first-born was named after the famous US Economist W. W. Rostow. His only medico brother is Romel. Rostow's parents had a name reserved for a girl child though they never had one: Helsinki. We did a name reservation on that for Rostow's daughter, even though at the time of forming the company, he was single.

Rostow studied commerce and then did his chartered accountancy and his company secretary examination with flying colors. He worked for KPMG as a Consultant and KPMG had decided to post him to New York. At that time, Lucent offered him a job in Bangalore to help set up the Bell Lab Development Center. Rostow is a finance person with the pretensions of a technologist.

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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