Fifty-seven is considered an over-the-hill age in the youth-driven IT industry. Burn out happens, dynamism dips and it?s time to log out. But at 57, Ashok Soota, Chairman and Managing Director (CMD) of MindTree Consulting, was in a different mode altogether. He had an urge to create a company of his own. The software industry was booming in India ? and Soota wanted to be part of the gold rush.

Soota started MindTree Consulting ? a start-up IT and telecom service provider with an R&D centre ? in 1999, with nine other co-founders and funds from a US-based venture capitalist. Today, MindTree ranks among the top emerging Indian IT companies. It employs 2,000 people and has recorded a 60 per cent growth rate in the past two years. It has also been ranked among the best employers by the Hewitt, BusinessWorld and Data Quest surveys.

MindTree?s chief mind says that life?s little lessons taught him more than his engineering and MBA degrees put together. Soota?s father was in the army and he went to 12 schools in 12 years. ?I learnt how to learn quickly. I learnt to be fast and agile ? the two mantras of the present-day work culture,? says 62-year-old Soota.

Having grown up in a family of six brothers and sisters, Soota had also learnt the art of sharing. ?Sharing is a core MindTree value,? he says. It permeates everything people do in the company.

Soota says his life has been a series of happy coincidences. ?I was always at the right place at the right time,? he says.

After graduating from Roorkee Engineering College, Soota got his first break with Burmah Shell. He was a small fish in a big pond in the company. So he quit. ?There was no mental challenge in the job,? he says. The young engineer preferred to work with the much smaller DCM Shriram group ? never mind if his peers thought he was crazy.

The first happy coincidence happened at DCM. He was in Calcutta for official work, when he was attacked by Naxalites. ?I had to take leave and go home to Bombay,? he says. That?s where he saw an admission advertisement for the Asian Institute of Management (AIM), Manila, applied and got selected.

Soota returned to DCM after completing his MBA. He worked with the company for 20 years, many of which he spent as head of Usha International (a DCM Shriram group company), in Sri Lanka.

Happy coincidence number two happened when Soota took a sabbatical to the USA and caught up with old college friends. It so happened that Azim Premji contacted the same friends a few months later, asking them to recommend a suitable candidate for Wipro?s top job. Soota?s name was in the short-term memory and popped up.

Soota joined Wipro in 1984. That?s the first time he ? and not life ? took a decision for himself. ?I saw the potential in IT,? he says.

Soota saw right. By the Nineties, dotcom was dazzling in India. That?s when MindTree happened. The company saw both the crests and troughs of India?s software mart. When the dotcom bust took place, MindTree survived on its telecom business. When the telecom bust happened, it concentrated on IT. ?We had the rug pulled from under our feet twice. But we didn?t stumble. It did wonders to our confidence,? says Soota.

MindTree is on firm ground now. It has expanded its portfolio to Internet technology business, ERP and supply chain and application management, has entered the Europe, Japan, Singapore and West Asian markets and has customers ranging from Fortune 10 companies to start-ups.

But what Soota likes best about the company is its value system ? CLASS ? which stands for caring, learning, achieving, sharing and social responsibility. A spastic child created the MindTree logo. ?During appraisals, 40 per cent weightage is put on our values,? says Soota.

Soota follows an unrivalled value system on his personal front as well. The ?happily single,? CMD shares his sprawling Bangalore mansion with three dogs and two turtles ? the geese live in his farmhouse. His favourite pastimes are meditation, yoga and trekking. ?It gives me a healthy mind and a healthy body,? he says.

It?s just the recipe for the healthy growth of MindTree.