Growing India:

India also faces rising competition in the low end of the business from other Asian countries like China, Vietnam and the Philippines. With salaries in software companies here rising at more than 15 percent a year, India must expand into new areas that promise a higher return."What gives us an edge is that our education system has a bias toward mathematics and engineering," said Vivek Paul, the current vice chairman of Wipro.

"But China will be a real threat in a few years."
Enter Mr. Soota, who had already steered Wipro through a transition from making PC's and minicomputers in the 1980's to providing software services. Determined to have a "third inning" in his career, Mr. Soota left Wipro in 1999 and began hunting for seed capital to start his own business.Unknown to him, another Wipro refugee, Subroto Bagchi, had also been promoting the idea of a high-end software consultancy. A partner at a venture capital firm in the United States, Walden International, put the two men together in March 1999 and suggested they merge their plans.


With $9.5 million from Walden and an Indian venture firm, Sivan Securities, Mind Tree Consulting hung out its shingle six months later. From the start, it behaved differently from a typical Indian company.First, the founders pledged to donate 3 percent of Mind Tree's after-tax profits to primary education. The company's initial donation went to a center in Bangalore for children with cerebral palsy.The company logo, a stylized tree, was designed by the children, and their artwork adorns the walls throughout the headquarters, which are two glass boxes in a clamorous residential neighborhood.


Mr. Soota said he chose not to build a suburban campus, like that of Infosys, because he did not want his employees to spend three hours a day commuting on Bangalore's horrendous roads. Likewise, he noted, Mind Tree's philanthropy was part of a broader business strategy."It will attract a certain kind of employee, which in turn will attract a certain kind of customer," he said.