MindTree raises revenue estimates, to tap VC funding

BANGALORE: MindTree Consulting will go for its second round of investment in the second half of this year, during which it will raise about $20 million. This was announced by MindTree Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Ashok Soota while speaking to the press following the inauguration of MindTree House 3 in the city on Thursday. During its first round, it had raised $9.5 million, with Walden International and Sivan Securities coming in as venture capital investors.

Mr Soota said that the performance of the company in its first full year has been well ahead of its earlier projections. MindTree accepts to achieve a turnover of $15 million against the earlier projected $9 million during 2000-01. He added that the company has also revised its revenue target for 2005 to $231 million against the earlier figure of $123 million.

MindTree will enter a third line of business in the enterprise segment, under which it will expand the range of enterprise service offerings. This will cover areas such as supply chain management and customer relationship management. Mr Soota said that at this point it was not decided which line of business would the company enter in.

He said that the company’s employee strength will touch 450 by March 2001 and will go up to about 1,000 by the end of the year. Geographical expansion would be the company’s main focus in the coming fiscal year. It will open office in Singapore in April 2001. The company also plans to enter Europe with an office in UK, to start with. Mr Soota said that early next year, the company will also have a presence in Japan.

Delivering the keynote address, National Association of Software Services and Companies (Nasscom) President Dewang Mehta said that the total domestic Internet bandwidth available in the country would increase to 2.5 Gbps by March 2001, spread across 165 cities. Stressing on the need for making available much more international bandwidth for the corporate sector, he pointed out that the by March India will have about 1Gbps of international bandwidth. Mr Mehta said that the single biggest aim of Nasscom for 2001 is to get a daily international flight to Bangalore.