Ashok Soota has written the book on entrepreneurship. Not just metaphorically, but literally too. Entrepreneurship Simplified: From Idea to IPO, which he co-authored with his former colleague SR Gopalan in 2016, ought to be compulsory reading for anyone contemplating a startup. One of its central premises, that a venture is only as good as its idea, runs through a book packed with practical advice that might have saved many a venture built on hype and destroyed by it.

And why not? Soota has earned the right to explain entrepreneurship better than almost anyone in India.

On 31 August, Happiest Minds, the company he founded in 2011, announced a proposed merger with ITC Infotech. As part of the transaction, Soota and the promoter group have agreed to sell their 22.1% stake in Happiest Minds to ITC Infotech for ₹1,330 crore. Of course, for Soota, this is not so much an exit as an interregnum in a remarkable career that shows no signs of ending any time soon.

Happiest Minds was his third major act as an entrepreneur, after Mindtree and the businesses he helped build at Wipro. And even as one chapter closes, another is underway, with his energies increasingly shifting towards SKAN, his medical research trust focused on ageing and neurological ailments, and Happiest Health, the diagnostics-and-wellness venture he launched in 2022.

That instinct to move on may have something to do with his early peripatetic life. Born in November 1942 into an army doctor’s family, Soota attended twelve schools before finishing at La Martiniere, Lucknow. Subsequently, he earned a degree in electronics from IIT Roorkee in 1964 and later an MBA from the Asian Institute of Management in Manila.

In 1965, he joined the DCM group, where he learnt early lessons in management from Charat Ram. By 1978, he was chief executive of Shriram Refrigeration, then four years into losses. He turned it around within a year, acquiring a reputation for operational discipline that followed him.

The IT bet

Then came Wipro. Soota joined when, under Azim Premji, it was still better known for vegetable oil than information technology. As president of Wipro Infotech from 1984, he helped transform its fledgling IT operation from a $2 million business into a $500 million one by the time he left to co-found Mindtree in 1999.

Mindtree, built around a culture that often seemed at odds with the industry’s hierarchical traditions, became one of Indian IT’s distinctive success stories. Its successful 2007 listing was the beginning of a run that delivered substantial wealth to shareholders.

But by 2011, Soota’s relationship with his co-creation was turning sour, and he left shortly after the company abandoned a diversification into smartphones that he had championed through the acquisition of Kyocera Wireless’s India R&D unit. With hindsight, it is tempting to see the bet as less a mistake than a case of premature timing. India would later become obsessed with building a domestic electronics and smartphone ecosystem.

But looking back was never Soota’s way.

Starting again

At 68, when most of his peers were easing off, he launched Happiest Minds. His reputation ensured investors such as Canaan Partners and Intel Capital were happy to back him. Happiest Minds went public in 2020, its spectacular listing another reminder that Soota’s appetite for starting over was a repeatable business strategy.

In between building companies, he chaired the Confederation of Indian Industry and the Manufacturers’ Association of Information Technology, served on the prime minister’s task force on IT and was associated with the World Intellectual Property Organization. Not surprisingly, he’s built a digital rolodex that’s the stuff of industry legend.

Trim, fit and almost always impeccably composed, Soota is fond of using a sheet of paper to reduce complexity through reason and logic. Tai Chi and yoga are part of his routine, perhaps explaining the calm that seems remarkably resistant to circumstance, including a battle with cancer from which he recovered.

A confirmed bachelor, he lives in Bengaluru’s tech-heavy Koramangala area in a simple but aesthetically done-up home whose garden welcomes neighbourhood children every evening. It shows the gentler side of a man whose professional life has been anything but soft.

Soota has now built, helped build or reinvent businesses across refrigeration, information technology, digital engineering and healthcare. Few entrepreneurs have successfully started over after their first success. Fewer still have done it repeatedly, at an age when the rest of the world asks when they intend to retire.

At 83, Ashok Soota is in no mood to oblige.

For more such stories, read The Enterprising Indian: Stories From India Inc.

Ashok Soota has written the book on entrepreneurship. Not just metaphorically, but literally too. Entrepreneurship Simplified: From Idea to IPO, which he co-authored with his former colleague SR Gopalan in 2016, ought to be compulsory reading for anyone contemplating a startup. One of its central premises, that a venture is only as good as its idea, runs through a book packed with practical advice that might have saved many a venture built on hype and destroyed by it.

And why not? Soota has earned the right to explain entrepreneurship better than almost anyone in India.

On 31 August, Happiest Minds, the company he founded in 2011, announced a proposed merger with ITC Infotech. As part of the transaction, Soota and the promoter group have agreed to sell their 22.1% stake in Happiest Minds to ITC Infotech for ₹1,330 crore. Of course, for Soota, this is not so much an exit as an interregnum in a remarkable career that shows no signs of ending any time soon.

Happiest Minds was his third major act as an entrepreneur, after Mindtree and the businesses he helped build at Wipro. And even as one chapter closes, another is underway, with his energies increasingly shifting towards SKAN, his medical research trust focused on ageing and neurological ailments, and Happiest Health, the diagnostics-and-wellness venture he launched in 2022.

That instinct to move on may have something to do with his early peripatetic life. Born in November 1942 into an army doctor’s family, Soota attended twelve schools before finishing at La Martiniere, Lucknow. Subsequently, he earned a degree in electronics from IIT Roorkee in 1964 and later an MBA from the Asian Institute of Management in Manila.

In 1965, he joined the DCM group, where he learnt early lessons in management from Charat Ram. By 1978, he was chief executive of Shriram Refrigeration, then four years into losses. He turned it around within a year, acquiring a reputation for operational discipline that followed him.

The IT bet

Then came Wipro. Soota joined when, under Azim Premji, it was still better known for vegetable oil than information technology. As president of Wipro Infotech from 1984, he helped transform its fledgling IT operation from a $2 million business into a $500 million one by the time he left to co-found Mindtree in 1999.

Mindtree, built around a culture that often seemed at odds with the industry’s hierarchical traditions, became one of Indian IT’s distinctive success stories. Its successful 2007 listing was the beginning of a run that delivered substantial wealth to shareholders.

But by 2011, Soota’s relationship with his co-creation was turning sour, and he left shortly after the company abandoned a diversification into smartphones that he had championed through the acquisition of Kyocera Wireless’s India R&D unit. With hindsight, it is tempting to see the bet as less a mistake than a case of premature timing. India would later become obsessed with building a domestic electronics and smartphone ecosystem.

But looking back was never Soota’s way.

Starting again

At 68, when most of his peers were easing off, he launched Happiest Minds. His reputation ensured investors such as Canaan Partners and Intel Capital were happy to back him. Happiest Minds went public in 2020, its spectacular listing another reminder that Soota’s appetite for starting over was a repeatable business strategy.

In between building companies, he chaired the Confederation of Indian Industry and the Manufacturers’ Association of Information Technology, served on the prime minister’s task force on IT and was associated with the World Intellectual Property Organization. Not surprisingly, he’s built a digital rolodex that’s the stuff of industry legend.

Trim, fit and almost always impeccably composed, Soota is fond of using a sheet of paper to reduce complexity through reason and logic. Tai Chi and yoga are part of his routine, perhaps explaining the calm that seems remarkably resistant to circumstance, including a battle with cancer from which he recovered.

A confirmed bachelor, he lives in Bengaluru’s tech-heavy Koramangala area in a simple but aesthetically done-up home whose garden welcomes neighbourhood children every evening. It shows the gentler side of a man whose professional life has been anything but soft.

Soota has now built, helped build or reinvent businesses across refrigeration, information technology, digital engineering and healthcare. Few entrepreneurs have successfully started over after their first success. Fewer still have done it repeatedly, at an age when the rest of the world asks when they intend to retire.

At 83, Ashok Soota is in no mood to oblige.

For more such stories, read The Enterprising Indian: Stories From India Inc.