Yet another leading IT outsourcing firm in India is in the eye of a storm as its founders refuse to let go of the reins.
Bengaluru-based Mindtree has made headlines after one of its investors, the owner of coffee chain Café Coffee Day (CCD), VG Siddhartha, struck a deal to sell his 20.32% stake in the company to Indian engineering giant Larsen & Toubro (L&T). The decision did not go down well with co-founders Krishnakumar Natarajan, Subroto Bagchi, Parthasarathy NS, and CEO Rostow Ravanan, who deemed the hostile takeover “a grave threat” to the 20-year-old organisation.
The problem is that Mindtree and L&T may not be seeing eye-to-eye yet.
“The complaint is from a passion perspective,” said Yugal Joshi, vice-president of Texas-based consulting firm Everest Group. Mindtree has invested in newer areas such as agile, design thinking, and cloud services; it’s made crucial acquisitions, including buying out both UK-based Bluefin and US-headquartered Relational Solutions.
