Subroto Bagchi to be chairman of MindTree board

BANGALORE, INDIA: After the top-level restructuring at Wipro Technologies and succession plan at Infosys Limited, here comes the reshuffle at MindTree Limited.

Subroto Bagchi, vice chairman and co-founder, will assume a new role as the chairman of the company's board of directors, effective April 1. The IT and product engineering services company announced this here on Wednesday. "It's an unusual, emotional moment. I accept the board's decision with great humility. The tip of the arrow is the CEO and the job of the board will be the tail of the arrow," said Bagchi.

As a part of the changes, current chairman Dr Albert Hieronimus will step down from his position to make way for Bagchi, but would continue to be on the board as the vice-chairman.

Following the exit of Ashok Soota, then executive chairman and one of the founders, last April, Hieronimus was appointed as the non-executive chairman of MindTree.

"One year ago, MindTree was in troubled waters due to two major challenges. One was loss of business and impact because of the entry (into) and exit from mobile business, and another as a result of the exit of the former chairman (Soota)," said Hieronimus.

It's not best of times for the company, which is hoping for a reversal of fortunes, especially after it entered the telecom products domain, only to reverse its decision later.

It was back in October 2009, then head of strategy Soota devised a foray into mobile handsets manufacturing by acquiring the India R&D centre of Kyocera Wireless. Within a year, the company had to shut down the business and lost several million dollars in the bargain. So, it was decided  later that MindTree would stick to only services.

Over the past one year, Hieronimus said that there were a lot of positive developments, including improvement in their profitability and betterment in strategy. He attributed his stepping down from the post of chairman to his sporadic availability in India.

"I am coming to India only once a month over the last year. It was always my intention to change the rules when the right time comes. It is time to have a leadership with full-time executive involvement, and as a non-resident of India and a non-executive, I cannot offer this."

But, it doesn't mean any change in direction, said Krishnakumar Natarajan, chief executive officer and managing director of MindTree. "We are just setting up the next big orbit. It's nothing to do with the market expectations. The idea is to collaboratively run the company and certainly aspire to be a $1 billion company, which will be an outcome of our changes," he explained, clarifying that they found this to be the opportune moment to effect the change.

Now, the company plans to have a vision to realize by 2020. Said Bagchi, "It is time to globalize and to become a truly global company from being a local player with overseas presence. As the last 12 years, the next eight will also go off in a blink."

The transition, according to Bagchi, would be expertise-led and backed by culture in sight of their goals for 2020. He also said that their campus in Bhubaneswar would go operational in a span of 15-18 months.

At the conference, Hieronimus also informed that the number of the board of directors would be brought down from seven to five. "One position in the future board is currently vacant. We are in talks and considerations for the additional director and will announce it in due time."

Effective March 31, two directors — N. Vittal, George Scalise — will retire from the board, while another director, Mark Runacres, would step down due to his other commitments.

Early this month, MindTree decided to hire 4,000 freshers to add to its current workforce of 10,000.