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Meet the man who started a 12,000 CR company at 69. 1. Ashok Soota was famously known as the magic man of the IT industry. In 1978, he took over as CEO of Shriram Refrigeration, which posted losses for four consecutive years and turned it around to its first profit in five years. But his most considerable stint came six years later. 👇 2. In 1984, he became the president of Wipro's IT practice, Wipro Infotech, and grew its revenue from 22 CR to 2200 CR within 15 years, making it the biggest Indian minicomputer company. Even the then-CEO of rival Intel, Andy Grove, gave him a letter of appreciation. But he had other plans. 🤔 3. In August 1999, he founded Mindtree with nine other IT professionals and scaled it to 455.37 CR revenue in six years. In February 2007, he made it public through a 237.72 CR IPO that oversubscribed 110 times. Ashok had made it big, but things went wrong from there. 👇 4. Stagnating revenues, missed growth targets, and disagreements between Ashok and other members on M&A strategy ultimately led to his resignation from Mindtree on 28th January 2011. Even after 33 years of a glorious career, 69-year-old Ashok was thinking about his next steps. 🤔 5. He wanted to build a company that prioritized happiness among its employees and customers. He took the big step and started a company again with nine members a month after resigning. In April 2011, Happiest Minds Technologies was born. 🚀 6. Ashok's vision was simple ⏩ Build a mindful IT company focused on emerging technologies such as cloud computing, social media, mobility, analytics, and security. It would target sectors like travel, media, manufacturing, CPG, BFSI, and retail, and it opened for business on 29th August 2011. 💼 7. Within three months, it had customers from the US, UK and India and opened five offices in Bangalore (India), New Jersey (US) and Reading (UK). On 16th November 2011, it raised 228 CR led by Cannan Partners and Intel Capital. 💰 8. Ashok knew competition was there, but nobody focused on connected IT. So, he adopted the "Born Digital" approach and sold conventional IT products with a mix of AI, IoT, and analytics, as well as crucial global partnerships like MongoDB (Sep 2014) and Mastercard (Dec 2014). And the idea worked. ✅ 9. By 2018, it scaled to a revenue of 460.23 CR and serviced 38 Fortune Global 2000 names. Two years later, it made history with its 702 CR IPO in September 2020, getting oversubscribed by 151 times. With a premium of 111.4% on the listing, it was the most successful IPO of 2020. 💪 10. Today, Happiest Minds has 1710.03 CR in annual revenues and serves 61 billion-dollar and 48 million-dollar companies in the US, UK, India, Canada, Australia, and the Middle East. It is worth 12,276 CR. 🙌 ➡️ Ashok Soota has won over 100 awards for his work. Still, he is known as the man who donated 375 CR for India's largest private sector medical research on Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease. 🙏