Interview Questions

Full Interview with Ashok Soota

Ashok Soota:

There can never be any one thing that leads to success. First, there is the hybrid business model that we have evolved, which is a high consulting low-cost model. It gives the customer the best of both worlds. Another important factor that has contributed to our success is the high people and customer satisfaction that we have had from the very beginning. This is crucial because IT is essentially a customer business and a people business. Then comes the technologies and the intellectual properties which we have created, including the fact that we have acquired global leadership in the area of Bluetooth. We have also created frameworks to reduce costs and improve productivity.

Every year, over the last six years, we have added one technology vertical practice, and this has ensured that we have a fairly large suite of offerings that enables us to meet the requirements of our customers.

 

Ashok Soota:

There are three or four reasons for this. One is a very conscious desire to be seen as acreative company that is a great place to work. We believe that people satisfaction is of high importance. This comes across thanks to four broad areas. One is communications: as a company we try and communicate better with employees in order to get them to understand issues. For instance, we literally share with the entire team the strategic documents that we share with our board.

 

Another way we have combated attrition is through inclusiveness, by bringing together the families of all our employees. We have a communication called the Circle of Life, which we mail out to the parents of our employees. In fact, we don't even use the word employee; we call our people MindTree Minds. It's our way of acknowledging that the minds of the people, who help us to build our business, are of great importance for us. We have also created facilities that enable women to be able to manage their work at different stages of their lives and careers because it is more difficult for them to achieve a work-life balance.

 

The third one is a matter of policy. We may have been the 1,500th software company out of India, but we were the first services company to give stock options to our people. Now that we're heading into a pre-IPO period, the value of these stocks will go up. Talking about attrition, our lateral hiring, (which is) the ratio of what we hire from competitors compared to what we lose to them, is almost 4.5:1. So, it is not just an ability to retain people, but also to attract them. Finally, we have empowerment. We spend a lot of time talking with our people to find out what they need to become more effective. We focus heavily on the overall development of all our people, and this has helped us to both fight attrition as well as to hire the best minds.

Ashok Soota:

I think there has to be an understanding between the CIO and the CEO. You hear so often about the CIO-CEO divide because a lot of companies take a long time to figure out what they want to get done, and then they want it overnight. In reality, the CEO and the other non-IT people must understand that it takes time to deliver an IT project. If you get this basic understanding in place, then I think a lot of misunderstandings can be eliminated.

You must also remember that you cannot short-circuit processes. The CIO must have the confidence to say that this process will take so much time, and ensure that he resists unreasonable pressure. But, having committed, the obligation then falls upon the CIO to deliver. So, it is a two-step approach. If the CIO allows himself to be bullied or overly persuaded into accepting what he feels is not deliverable, he will get into trouble.

Ashok Soota:

I think it would be tragic if it was. IT has to be seen as something that is strategic to companies, something that enables you to leverage competitive advantage. IT is a tool that enables you to transform the organization and open up new markets. IT also helps you to flatten your organization, and this improves communication both internally and externally. There is no reason to look at it as a cost center because IT is a source of strategic benefits.

Ashok Soota:

In many cases, the success of IT projects are easily measurable. ROI in most cases can be measured in terms of improvements in cycle time and cost savings. For instance, when you are implementing an ERP system, you will see payback in 12 to 18 months.

 

More important is the fact that, without IT, you wouldn't be able to do certain tasks at all, because certain business models are unsustainable without IT. Ultimately, the success of an IT project has to be viewed primarily from where it has added value to an organization.

 

Ashok Soota:

I would view this at two levels. One: if you think of a managing council as an internal board, I think it is important that the CIO View from the Top should be on it. With reference to the external board, there are always limitations, such as the size of your board. But, on the internal board, the CIO must be present. Otherwise, he will not be able to get an understanding of how the company functions. Also, when you talk about change, the person has to be seen as having a certain degree of presence and clout.

So, if the CIO is relegated to a level lower than the department heads, he is always going to be requesting them for things, making it difficult to introduce change.

 

Ashok Soota:

Let me first give you a different sort of response before I come back to your question. If you look at outsourcing, the good thing is that when budgets are tight, people are looking for more cost reductions, and so there is a greater thrust towards off-shoring. When business is good, there is a lot of work, and a lot of offshoring happens. Therefore, you will see that offshoring has had a steady growth.

 

Of course, this is not the same as an organization's imperatives in terms of its total budgets. During difficult times, it is important to understand the CIO when he says that one of his key areas is to help business, not merely to save costs. If the CIO is able to introduce projects that help to expand the market and introduce new channels - projects that have early payback - then he will be able to resonate very well with the heads of business. If the CIO is in tune with the needs of the business, then there is no need for an IT slowdown. But clearly, there are marginal projects that somebody will want to put on hold. The CIO must be able to acknowledge this as an organizational need.

 

Ashok Soota:

It's a very important question. The job of a CIO is very demanding. In my view, the first thing that a CIO must be is a change agent. He must be implementing transformational projects and he must be able to see the change. He must be a visionary with a roadmap and must understand what his department has to achieve. Apart from understanding technology and the directions technology is taking, he should also have a keen grasp of metrics and processes because whatever he is doing needs to be measured. He also needs to be innovative, and most importantly, understand business. When you consider all these things, then you realize that the dimensions of a CIO's job are really diverse.

 

Quite often, the CIO has the largest capital expenditure budget in an organization. So in effect, he also needs to be a person who can manage his resources well.

 

Ashok Soota:

There are two parts to this question: where the user is today, and the role of IT in larger companies. As far as the larger role of IT is concerned, IT is related to knowledge and IT for India is like oil to the Middle East - only oil is a diminishing resource to which one will find a substitute. But there is no substitute to IT and knowledge. Therefore, it is of critical and strategic importance to the country.

 

Regarding the role of IT in larger companies, enterprises are increasingly seeking to become global players, and IT is, therefore, becoming more important to them. But progress is still slow, and there are only a few sectors in which IT usage is completely state-of-the-art and comparable with the best worldwide, like banking and telecommunications, which are fairly IT intensive businesses to start with. Many other industries don't have the same degree of IT maturity today - industries like energy and retail come to mind. Another good thing in India is that e-governance is becoming more important. And, IT is also playing a larger role in rural connectivity.

 

Ashok Soota:

Let me give you the most glaring example of where outsourcing isn't present. Take the R&D outsourcing business out of India - like the work that Wipro does for Cisco, or what we do for Symantec - and you will find that we are talking about a $4-billion industry. In India, are we doing any outsourcing in that area? Not at all. Whether it is the government labs or the private sector, this is at best miniscule. On the application side, yes, there is outsourcing. Largely, this is happening in the area of infrastructure support. This is in contrast with the West, where it began with application development and support before going into outsourcing infrastructure. Right now, the domestic industry is growing at around 30 percent. Globally, this is a $20-billion industry, which is also growing at 30 percent. Considering that we haven't even touched the surface of demand in India, in reality, the market should grow at around 50 percent per annum for at least a decade. I don't see that happening now.