Company Background

MindTree Consulting, established in 1999, is a global Information Technology services company with operations in the US, Europe, Middle East, Singapore, Japan and Australia.The company has its global head-quarters in Bangalore, India. Some of the major clients of the company are Volvo, BurgerKing, Cendant,Alcatel, Sanmina, Port Authority of Singapore, Unilever and Royal Mail, among others.It is today firmly established as Indias best midsized IT services company. MindTree was rated among the top 30 off-shoring service providers in the world by International Association of Outsourcing Professionals (IAOP) and Fortune magazine.

Factors for Success

OneShore Business Model MindTrees OneShore business model revolves around global software development and enables it to achieve a balance of quality, cost savings, and catering to different geographies.This model allows the MindTree to achieve a complete fusion of its global resources and business process, thereby helping it to emerge as a highly competitive company.

Mergers and Acquisitions MindTree is planning to fuel its future growth in the EU through strategic acquisitions and alliances.This will help the company in strengthening its foothold in the EU market.

Future Plans

Increasing its European Presence The EU has an economy which is approximately the same size as that of the US economy but MindTree has only 22 per cent of its business coming from the EU.The company views the EU as central to its growth plans and its objective is to increase its share of business in the EU. It has plans to invest in opening new offices to increase its business in the EU.

Knowledge Enhancement Plans MindTree plans to leverage its ongoing association with the UK Trade & Investment Body to further understand the EU market and penetrate it.The company has plans to participate in the various industrial conferences to showcase its strengths and gain new clients.This plan of action will be a part of its brand-building exercise in the EU,

Is it about culture or is it about values?

One of the important rites of passage for a young company has nothing to do with business. It has to do with culture. In MindTree, we were trying a create a next generation company that would work business backwards blending highcaliber local-feel consulting with the discipline of off-shore software development. The two are inherently different animals. No doubt, the world was comfortably perched on the dichotomy between on-site and offshore software development and here was MindTree saying it was possible to forge a concept we coined internally as OneShore.

The consulting world works in a businessbackward manner many among us, who came from the software development world, were more comfortable working in a technology forward manner. The style of the consulting folks was one of authority and confidence, with the ability to articulate and be upfront. Consultants demonstrated high physical and mental energy. In their interactions, form precedes substance and they invariably look for intensity as a pre-requisite to commitment when looking at others in the team.

On the other hand, the folks who came from a software development background were understated and deferential. They had invisible but sustained energy. In their paradigm substance was everything. Finally, if they were Indians, intensity was a culturally unacceptable thing.

The folks who came from the consulting world were happier working with dynamic specifications and resources and their development counterparts were more content if specifications were cryogenically cooled and there was constancy of resources.
The former had a decisional style based on the here, now and today. The latter disliked all forms transitional.

To our surprise, Jukka said, You do not manage culture, nobody likes his or her culture to be managed. You have to focus on building values and insist that people who work in MindTree, share those values. You leave culture alone as long as you have shared values. How true the statement was! Out here, we were mud wrestling with a pig while the answer lay elsewhere. In a room full of MindTrees senior folks, Jukka asked us, So, what are your values? The room was silent. I walked up to the white board and wrote down the six values that we had articulated while conceptualizing MindTree. Those were:

Lower total cost of ownership for our customer TeamworkLearning Shared wealth creation Social sensitivity Integrity

Each value was expanded to convey an intended meaning and in turn, asked for certain behavior from each MindTree Mind.

Caring to us meant, caring for customers, employees and shareholder and what we called, organizational caring. Learning was about development and innovation. Achieving to us was accountability, action orientation and teamwork. Sharing involved giving away knowledge and encouraging, appreciating others. Social sensitivity was thought as commitment and integrity.