By Krishnakumar Natarajan – Chief Executive Officer of Mindtree
At Mindtree, we look upon good corporate governance practices as a key driver of sustainable corporate growth and long-term stakeholder value creation. Good corporate governance practices enable us to attract high-quality financial and human capital. This in turn helps us leverage and maximise long-term shareholder value and preserve the interests of multiple stakeholders, including the society at large.
All our employees, whom we refer to as ‘Mindtree Minds’, are expected to adhere to our core values and follow the highest standards of integrity. We have a clearly articulated integrity policy, which is applicable to all Mindtree Minds across all our offices globally.
While conducting business and in our dealings, we abide by the principles of honesty, openness and doing what is right and fair. We are committed to doing things the right way, which translates to ethical business decisions that are in compliance with the applicable legislation. These principles guide our behaviour at all times, without exceptions.
We follow the highest standards of corporate behaviour with everyone we work with, be it the communities or the environment. We believe this is the road to responsible, sustainable and profitable growth and creating long-term value for the company’s stakeholders, people and our business partners and society.
Salient features of the corporate philosophy that governs us are:
■ Act in the spirit of law and not just the letter of the law
■ Do what is right and not what is convenient
■ Provide complete transparency in our operations
■ Follow openness in our communication to all our stakeholders
Our Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) efforts are primarily carried out by the Mindtree Foundation, which was set up in 2007. With the help of several committed NGO partners, we deliver social values to deserving people.
Our CSR endeavour is not associated to a certain percentage of profits; we have contributed to social causes even when our financial performance has suffered. This is because our CSR is not strategic in its intent or outlook, but aligned to our values and culture. Mindtree launched ‘I Got Garbage’ (IGG), a cloud-based platform aimed at simplifying waste management and transforming Bangalore’s waste pickers into entrepreneurs through a structured and governed waste-management framework.
IGG aims at transforming the lives of waste pickers while helping cities better manage their residential and commercial waste.
The technology platform was built by bringing together businesses, government organisations and social entrepreneurs. We worked with waste pickers to develop innovative microbusiness models that would enable them to deliver structured waste-management services directly to waste generators (households and offices).
Our green community and sustainability teams evangelise ecological sustainability within the organisation. Events, such as the Earth Day and Environment Day, see prolific activities around various planetary themes. The organisation-wide activities help deepen people’s engagement with environmental responsibility.
Mindtree then, now and beyond
With digital taking centre stage, we see some exciting developments that will further elevate our position and open up opportunities. Digital currently accounts for a third of our revenues and is likely to drive a significant portion of our growth in FY 15-16 and beyond.
Mindtree was born digital in 1999 and digital has always been an important part of our business. At Mindtree, we make digital real by helping our clients leverage digital technology to elevate customer experiences, build streamlined technology solutions and bring products and services to markets cost-efficiently.
We deliver digital transformation services to our clients by helping them reimagine the buying experience for their customers and the collaboration experience for their employees. Mindtree brings robust skills and forward-looking perspectives to provide recommendations and remediate client challenges.
We continue to execute on our strategy of becoming recognised experts in the following four industry domains:
■ Consumer packaged goods, retail and manufacturing
■ Technology and media
■ Travel and hospitality
■ Banking, financial services and insurance
Acquisitions to drive growth and excellence
Earlier this year, we acquired Discoverture, a leading provider of property and casualty insurance solutions. With this acquisition, Mindtree is one of the top three service providers in the global property and casualty industry.
In July 2015, we acquired Relational Solutions Inc., to help strengthen our position in predictive analytics for consumer packaged goods (CPG) retail execution. Relational Solutions has proven expertise in analytics with solutions for supply chain optimisation and trade promotion analytics. “The corporate values we imbibe in all our Mindtree Minds and the governance philosophy we have articulated will stand the test of time and continue to help us grow”
Mindtree’s Agile Centre of Excellence
At Mindtree, we are specialists in Agile software development: a methodology marked by continuous change; cross-functional communication, coordination and collaboration; and the ability to deliver projects on time and within budget with exceptional quality. Mindtree’s Agile Centre of Excellence in Gainesville, Florida, is an exceptional blend of people, deep domain expertise and technology capabilities, all housed in a state-of-the-art facility designed for Agile development.
The Digital Pumpkin
Our IT and business groups identified a need to accelerate the business case creation for digital solutions in customer enterprises. The reason for stagnation at business case stage was due to the large volume of opportunity in digital that needed to be validated and conceptualised with limited bandwidth.
We created an innovation lab called The Digital Pumpkin to ease business case creation and release more projects into build phase. It is a co-innovation and co-creation platform for our customers and prospects. The Digital Pumpkin engages the business and IT community of a target enterprises to rapidly innovate, prototype and validate viability of digital solutions for their business. At The Digital Pumpkin, applied creativity and technology resulted in the creation of more than 40 concepts this year.
Mindtree Kalinga
Mindtree, in its exciting developmental journey, is sure to need leaders who are experts in multiple disciplines, bringing exceptional creativity to their work and realise their responsibility towards building a sustainable planet. From 2015 onwards, the talented young people we hire every year will complete a special 90-day training programme at Mindtree Kalinga, our new Global Learning and Development Centre located at Bhubaneshwar, Orissa.
A team of our best and brightest has spent two years imagining and designing this training platform to nurture the minds of the future. The Centre’s unique learning approach will help the young minds harness their physical, digital, intellectual and emotional intelligence.
We believe the corporate values we imbibe in all our Mindtree Minds and the governance philosophy we have articulated will stand the test of time and continue to help us grow our business.
About The Author:
A leading authority in the global IT sector, Krishnakumar Natarajan co-founded Mindtree in 1999 and has played key roles in building the company’s innovative approach to delivering IT services and solutions to global 1000 enterprises. Natarajan was instrumental in setting up Mindtree’s U.S. operations, driving expansion in Europe and Asia Pacific regions, and transforming Mindtree’s IT services business. Today, his mission as CEO is to lead an expertise-led organization as a standard-bearer of the new-wave of technology solution providers.
As CEO and Managing Director, Natarajan is actively engaged in ensuring a high quality of governance. He’s involved in recruiting and bringing diversity to the Mindtree board, resulting in a highly valuable group of independent directors. Natarajan’s efforts as a business leader have been recognized worldwide. He was ranked 28th of the 50 highest-rated CEOs by Glassdoor in 2013. He won Bloomberg UTV’s award as the CEO of the Year in 2010 and was recognized by Chief Executive Magazine’s as one of the twelve global leaders of tomorrow.
