The IT landscape is witnessing a tremendous transition in terms of technology disruption, changing consumer demand and dynamic workforce. Rostow Ravanan, CEO and Managing Director, Mindtree, believes they are in the right spot to leverage that by shifting focus back to India and investing in creating solutions through academic partnerships. In conversation with BusinessLine, Ravanan, who was here recently shared his thoughts on the changing dynamics of the industry. Excerpts:

The industry is in the middle of a biggest disruption, you mentioned, in terms of technology and solutions that customers demand. Would you say acquisition will help you bridge the gap?

For the problems we have right now, acquisitions are not an appropriate solution. Where are we investing? We are investing in people through training and to partner with leading academic institutions. In June, we announced a collaboration with Stanford University and recently a partnership with the Indian Institute of Technology-Madras. Including apartnership with IISc-Bengaluru that is being finalised, we will spend $4 million overall this year. We are not shying away from investments. But we are not choosing M&A and using it for research. We believe that is the solution we need to solve for the future.

From the partnerships and recent reports, Mindtree seems to be shifting its focus back to India. Why now?

We were in India 3-4 years back, but not very active. In the past, we found that the Indian market did not want to pay for value. The mindset was if you buy the computer, software will come free along with it. It was difficult for more value-added players like us.

Now we are recalibrating it for two reasons. Our research shows that if India does things right it can add trillion dollars to GDP through technology. We felt that there are not many markets in the world that offer trillion dollar worth of GDP creation.

Also, the marketplace has changed. It is recognising that the language and customers understand the differentiation and are willing to pay for that value.

Where will your focus be — government or private?

We will focus on our key verticals: retail, CPG and manufacturing, travel and hospitality, banking and financial services and hi-tech. Private sector is the primary preference.

But, we are not seeing big opportunities from government for an important reason. Software, especially, more value-added and complex kind of work does not easily fall in line with government tendering norms. The tendering norms require everything to be clear from the beginning. Also in the government govt projects there is a continuous challenge of getting money. So we are extremely selective about government projects.

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