Subroto Bagchi CAST STUDY  solution

Mind tree which was founded in 1999 in India by a group of IT professionals who wanted to chart a somewhat distinctive path. Today, it has a top line of $269 million and is rated as one of the most promising mid-sized IT services companies. Creditable as that is, Mind Tree does not want to be just that. There is an element of serendipity about what it has been doing over the last year. In 2008, it designated one of its founders Subroto Bagchi „Gardener‟, a gimmicky signal, intended to declare that he was moving out of the day-to-day running of the company to nurture talent which would run the company in the future. He has now a report card ready on a year as gardener. During this one year, he has also spent around 45 days travelling round the world talking to clients and prospective ones which has yield remarkable insights into what firms are doing in these traumatic times. Lastly, Mind Tree as a whole has spent the last year going through the exercise of redefining its mission statement and vision for the next five years. Quite fortuitously these processes have come together with a unifying thread, presenting a coherent big picture. Mind Tree wants to seed the future while still young, and executive chairman Ashok Soota has declared that by 2020, it will be led by a non-founder. So a year ago the gardener Bagchi set out to “touch” 100 top people in the organization, with a goal of doing 50 in a year so as to eventually identify the top 20 by 2015. From among them will emerge not just the leader but a team of ten who would eventually, as group heads, deliver $200 million of turnover each. That will give a turnover of $2 billion. To put it in perspective, one one VC-funded company, which has not closed or been bought over, has been able to get to $2 billion and that is Google. But to get there it has to periodically redefine its mission (why we exist) and its vision – measurable goals for the
next five years. Its redefined mission is built around “successful customers, happy people, and innovative solution”. Its new vision targets a turnover of $1 billion by 2014. It wants to be among the globally 20 most profitable IT services companies and also among the 20 globally most admired ones. Admired in terms of customer satisfaction (pay for the course), people practices (creditable), knowledge management (exciting) and corporate governance (the Enron-Satyam effect). The really interesting bit about Mind Tree in the last one year is what Bagchi has been up to. He has been embedding himself in the 50 lives, working in a personal private continuum, making it a rich learning process “which has helped connect so many dots.” Of the hundred who will be engaged, may be 50
will leave, of them 25 may better themselves only marginally, and from the remaining 25 ten will emerge who will carry the company forward.
Questions:
1. What do you analyses as the main reason behind the success of Mind tree?
2. Do you think that redefining the mission statement shows the lacunae on the part of the founder members of an organization? Why?