Happiest Minds building up through 10 strategic transformational changes: Ashok Soota

Happiest Minds has been delivering transformation with innovation, integration, and industry expertise. At an event in Bangalore, Ashok Soota, Chairman & Chief Mentor, stated that the theme is: Delivering Transformation with Innovation, Integration & Industry Expertise.  

We are going to talk about 10 strategic transformational changes launched by Happiest Minds since FY24, and going ahead through FY26.  The latest change is the one we announced on 19th March 2025 regarding our apex organizational structure. The moment we sent this out, we were flooded with a number of queries on the change. Joseph who is now Co-Chairman & CEO will talk about this change.

Let me start from where these 10 transformational changes began.  After a few years of delay, we finally completed two acquisitions – PureSoftware and Aureus whose results were integrated in Q1 of FY25.  The wait had been worthwhile because both organizations were aligned with our culture, brought in excellent talent and the acquisitions were cash-accretive.  

The results of these acquisitions led to our growth in FY25 being well above industry average.  This is not a results meeting and therefore I will not give any numbers. Three more transformational changes followed in the second half of FY25.  We did say these changes would begin to make an impact in FY26, which you will see very soon.  

These three changes were:
* Reorganizing Happiest Minds on an IG-wise basis and creating 5 new industry groups;
* Being the very first company to recognize the potential of GenAI by creating an independent business unit headed by Sridhar Mantha, a Happiest Minds veteran and our erstwhile CTO for 12 years;
* We appointed a Chief Growth Officer, Maninder Singh, and gave him the responsibility for net new sales. Maninder’s team is already making visible impact by bringing in new logos.  These transformational changes will show great growth in FY26 and even more so in FY27, assuring us of a healthy organic growth in FY26 and then FY27.

The four transformational changes of FY24 were followed in FY25 by the apex organizational changes mentioned earlier. Our Co-Chairman & CEO will be talking about this, and the 6th, 7th and 8th transformation initiatives. Our Co-Chairman is already drawing up plans for:

Transformation 6: Developing a Private Equity Company eco-system and their portfolio companies;
Transformation 7: Addressing the requirement of GCC companies;
Transformation 8: Creating a large accounts focus strategy which will take about 10 – 15 of our 2-3-million-dollar accounts and raise them to 10-, 15- and 20-million dollars.

Joseph will give you more color on these transformational initiatives and execution plans for the same.

As the IT industry has come under pressure in recent years, I have been feeling that it needs to be strengthened by a products and SaaS Solutions approach. We were fortunate in gaining one such product, Arttha in the BFSI space through our acquisition of PureSoftware.  A product team has been enhancing the product capability, and also moving to a SaaS platform.  Both the product and the SaaS solution will co-exist.  

This is our ninth transformational change, and Joseph will share with you more about how we are going ahead with this initiative.

The 10th and final transformational change is our HaaS solution. The product will be delivered in two phases: first as a revolutionary product, which is expected to be available for launch by Q4. The HaaS solution will require another year. At this time, I have the Board of Directors’ permission to make a directional statement. The final decision to include this in our offerings will be taken by our Board only when the business plan is ready towards the end of FY26.  

Lest there is a fear that development of the product will require large capital expenditure and strain our resources, let me assure you that even in the first full year, the business will run on a cash-positive basis.  It’s also important to mention that our product is being developed through the unique bio-informatics capability of Happiest Minds, of which we have been speaking during the last year.

I want to step back and take a look at the IT industry. The year FY25 is witnessing flat growth for some of the majors and negative growth for a few others. We have delivered a healthy double-digit growth, albeit most of it is inorganic. The market is predicting a US slowdown or recession. This has clouded the prospects for the Indian IT industry.  

We want to state emphatically that at Happiest Minds, we see no recession-driven slowdown.  Thanks to our 10 transformational changes and to our dedicated teams including those from PureSoftware and Aureus, we see a good view ahead for next 2 years.  This is not a results conference or a guidance conference, but I can say that we expect to delivery healthy double-digit organic growth, not just in FY26, but also FY27 due to the momentum we are building up through our 10 strategic transformational changes.