Building on billion dollar dream

Fifty two year old Krishnakumar Natarajan, popularly known as KK among his peers, friends and colleagues, is chief executive officer and managing director of MindTree Ltd. In this capacity, he has the overall responsibility of both the IT Services and the R&D services businesses of the organization.

Those who know MindTree and its founders know that it is KK who took the company’s IT Services to a global leadership position adding several Fortune 500 companies to its kitty.

While interacting with Srinivas R of CIOL, KK shared his thoughts on how MindTree is poised to become a billion dollar company by 2014.

We are not here to compete with anybody. Instead, we are building our capabilities on some of our core strengths. We believe that these strengths and focus will help us in achieving our goal. We have divided our business in to two segments. Services and Product engineering. Currently services business is contributing 55 percent of our revenues and rest comes from product engineering. So, instead of focusing on just one business segment or technology, we have identified few areas to focus on. For instance, we have infrastructure management services, testing and knowledge services under the services business. In product engineering, we work on wireless products and platforms, cloud technologies and embedded technologies. Our Aztec acquisition strengthened our position in this space since Aztec has a strong focus on software, says KK.

Excerpts of the chat:

Which are the segments or verticals you are addressing under the services business?

We focus on Manufacturing, Travel and transportation, BFSI and Government verticals. Under the government vertical we are focusing only on India market.

Recently MindTree got a deal from UIDAI (Aadhaar). It is said that you are looking at getting another deal from UIDAI. True?

Yes, MindTree will work as the development partner to build the Aadhaar application in collaboration with the technology team of UIDAI and other stakeholders. It will also carry out the ongoing services of development and enhancement to the core Aadhaar application. I have to say 'no' to your second part of the question. Because there is a certain turnover which is required to participate and MindTree do not qualify in that sense.

How are your markets doing? Are you looking at any new region? Is Euro crisis affecting your business?

Middle East is one of the key region for us. IT services market is growing in this region and we are strengthening our partnerships and increasing sales force to address government and manufacturing sectors. Our U.S. and Europe business is going as usual. Euro market has not affected our revenues since we do not have too much exposure to European markets.

What is cooking in your R&D center?

Our R&D services business unit spearheaded by Janakiraman offers technology building blocks, in the form of IP and frameworks, and helps bridge technology gaps and bring products to market faster. Around 45 percent of our revenues comes from this unit. We are working on next generation smartphones and wireless equipments. We would not like to launch these products under 'MindTree' brand. These would be developed for our partners and we work like an OEM.

Could you tell about MindTree's work in the assistive technology area?

We are associated with the Spastic society in various ways from the inception of MindTree. We believe we have to touch and enable lives of differently-abled people. In a small way, we are working towards it. We have developed some tech devices that allows children with muscular skeletal disorders to connect with computers. MindTree foundation has taken this initiative.

(MindTree has two products to help the differently-abled break free of their constraints. ADITI helps people with hand or muscle coordination difficulties to interact with a computer screen. Another product is called KAVI, an interactive communication device for people with special needs used as a Speech Generation device via text-to-speech and picture to speech software options).

What is the role of Mr. Soota and Mr. Bagchi in MindTree now?

Ashok mainly works on strategies and future growth plans for MindTree. Subrato has taken the role of grooming next generation leaders for MindTree.