Bagchi’s book, ‘The Day the Chariot Moved,’ examines the nature of transformational change in established systems.
Some lives refuse the neat lines of chronology. They wander through salt-crusted lanes, linger in the scent of wet earth, pause under trees, and then, without warning, leap into worlds where glass walls mirror the sky.
Subroto Bagchi’s journey has been one such, from the small towns of Odisha to the front lines of India’s IT revolution; from co-founding Mindtree to shaping a state’s skill development vision; from corporate boardrooms to authoring several books that speak intimately to the nation’s youth.
To speak of him only in the language of management, revenue curves, strategic pivots, market share, would be to reduce a river to a spreadsheet. The real story flows in quieter currents: childhood, unseen mentors, and moments that turn in the hand to reveal new shapes.
For Bagchi, Mindtree was an act of collective imagination. Go Kiss the World was a personal note to young Indians finding their way. The Day the Chariot Moved is less about answers than the art of asking better questions. His work with the Odisha Government redrew his definition of success, while his view of Corporate Social Responsibility remains rooted in nation-building, not ornament.
In a conversation with Scroll, Bagchi talked about founding Mindtree, his role as a public servant, and the joy of “pulling the chariot”. Excerpts from the conversation:
If you close your eyes and return to the Odisha of your childhood, what is the first image that insists on being seen?
The three images that come to my mind in an instant, are of beauty, innocence and wonder. I grew up mostly in the tribal districts of Odisha. We lived amidst mountains, lush forests, gurgling streams and the seasons that sang their songs to you. The innocence that touches me even today is that of the tribal people among whom we grew up. Only when you read Gopinath Mohanty’s Paraja, can you get a sense of what I mean by that. There is an English translation by Bikram Das, published by Oxford University Press. Finally, let me speak about wonder. I did not go to school till the age of eight because there were no schools nearby. As a result, most of the day, I was left to my own devices. I spent a lot of time wandering around, watching the world and always wondered about everything I saw. Only much later in life did I learn that the sense of wonder is foundational to all creativity. It is a gift, a skill, a defining life-capability.
You’ve spoken of learning more from life outside the classroom than within it. What, then, was the most important lesson formal education failed to teach you?
I am not one who likes to see any individual responsible for my inabilities and that extends to external “systems” as well. They do their best for us. We must understand that they operate from their limitations. To say, Hey, this person or that system failed me, is the expression of a frustrated mind. No one, nothing ever has failed me. If I take credit for my successes, I must also own and love my failures.
Who were your earliest invisible mentors, the ones who may never have known their influence on you?
I have had many mentors as I grew up. Most are quite visible in my books like Go Kiss the World and The Professional. I cannot think about anyone who remains invisible. While we are on that subject, something else comes to my mind. I recommend everyone to read a book that had a deep impact on me. It is Robert Greene’s book, Mastery. It talks about mentorship in a very practical, yet philosophical way. It speaks about the essence of mentorship, how to choose and be chosen by mentors and very importantly, about how you often must outgrow them. Heavy reading. But highly recommended. It took me six months to absorb the book.
Your early years in the corporate world took you from small beginnings to leadership positions. What did those years teach you about ambition and about restraint?
Unbridled ambition is a wild horse. The best riders are those who can tame it with the power of restraint. That restraint is with the rider, before it is transferred to the horse. A great ride is one where the rider and the horse become one. Ambition without restraint is a dangerous thing.
Was there ever a moment in those years when you thought you might walk away from corporate life altogether?
No, I did not. Though it was never my intent to join the corporate sector. It happened to me when I was at a crossroads at the age of 18. It gave me a much-needed foothold in life. I will always be grateful for that. Thereafter, there were the inevitable ups and downs as I built my career and my life, but I was never disenchanted with it. As I grew in my profession, I learnt two important things in life: as a corporate leader, you can build a purpose that is beyond wealth creation. You can create a larger social good by using the power of a business institution. Once you understand that, the platform acquires a different meaning and you do not have to walk away from it. Like a tree, you grow where you are planted.
Mindtree was not born in a vacuum; it was a particular moment in India’s IT history. What was the precise crack in the world through which the idea first entered?
Yes indeed. It was 1998 when we conceptualised the company. The world was at the confluence of three inflections. One, the internet was arriving as a powerful driver of every business, or for that matter, every institution. It came with the tag of “e-commerce”, even as you do not hear that word today. The second inflection was the Y2K phenomenon; the panic created huge new possibilities. The third, the Indian software industry became legitimate in the eyes of global customers. It was an unbelievable coming together of things and the opportunity was just not something we wanted to miss.
The founding values of Mindtree were unusual for a tech start-up in that era. Looking back, which of those values proved the hardest to protect?
We had articulated five core values at Mindtree. These were Caring, Learning, Achieving, Sharing and Social Sensitivity (CLASS). We spent a lot of time and energy evangelising these. They needed continuous conversation and sense-making. In these, the one about “Achieving” has an embedded idea. The idea of Integrity. You can achieve things by compromising the means for the end. In other words, it is possible to do the right things, the wrong way. We believed you have to do the right things the right way. And that leads us to the concept of Integrity. This needed a lot of conversation, particularly as the company grew because people join from many different organisations as you grow and often come with narratives of their past.
Mindtree’s culture has been widely written about. Was there a single story, a moment in the company’s life, that best captures what you were trying to build?
When 9/11 happened, we were just about two years old. The world came to a sudden standstill. Businesses evaporated. Customers went away. We were a nascent company with just the first round of investment. It was clear that for a long time, new funding would not happen. We needed to slash costs everywhere. The top four founders took a voluntary 25 per cent cut in salary. The rest of the company took a 10 per cent cut. That wasn’t going to be enough. We decided to let go of the bottom performers to save the company from possible financial distress. At this point, the middle-management team came to us en masse and said, This is the wrong time to shed the non-performers. In normal times, they could perhaps land on their feet elsewhere. But in the current times, they will not get a job anywhere. We should let them go only when the world rebounds. Until then, everyone stays. And for this, the middle management team said that they would take an additional salary cut to let the bottom performers stay. To me, that is culture. Very real, very tangible.
Your marriage to a well-known Odia writer Susmita Bagchi is also a literary partnership of sorts. How has her writing sharpened or softened your own storytelling?
Between the two of us, she is the story creator. She writes fiction. I am not in her league. As a non-fiction writer, I do not create story. I may use story as a technique to convey something. I may sometimes tell stories of real people, as I may have seen them. So, we traverse different worlds as writers. I read everything she writes and she reads most of what I write. We discuss our work in the formative stage. But we really do not go where the mutual influence is so deep that it could sharpen or soften style.
Parenting while building companies is often framed as a balancing act. In truth, is balance even possible or is it always a sequence of trade-offs?
We had two daughters when we were very young. The first one came when I was 25 and the second came three years after. That makes the mix somewhat different. The parent-child construct ameliorates. You grow up with each other. As a result, it doesn’t feel like you are doing much of balancing or making trade-offs. It felt like all of us went to different grades of the same school. They were as invested in our work as much we were invested in theirs. And besides, if you decide to bring a life to this Planet, do not make excuses and blame your work for not taking care of them. Don’t complain about time. If you love them enough, time will find you.
Go Kiss the World remains a deeply personal book. Did you know, as you were writing, that it would resonate with so many?
I absolutely did not think it would go where it did. I wrote it but it ended up writing me. Many people know me today because of that book.
Writing is also an act of selection, of what to leave unsaid. What was the hardest truth you left out of your books?
Susmita. She did not want to be written about. And a few things about Mindtree. They serve no significant purpose.
In The Day the Chariot Moved, you return to questions of purpose and legacy. What new ground did you want this book to break?
All the earlier books were written by an entrepreneur. You heard his voice. This one here was written by a crossover, someone who left behind everything and became a public servant. That voice is very different. In this book, I show you an India you have perhaps not seen before. I introduce the reader to people who live in our midst but we miss them in the humdrum of life. Through it all, I show you the fascinating, transformative journey of people at the bottom of the pyramid. The intent of writing this book is to hold up a lived-in experience of leading transformation at scale so that future leaders may benefit. They may be working in for-profit organisations, the government or a non-profit; this book will give them something useful and perhaps valuable.
The title feels both intimate and epic. Could you tell us how it came to you?
Like all my other titles, this one simply, suddenly, floated in my mind. From nowhere. And it beautifully held the essence of the book together. Development is a chariot. By itself, it remains inert. Then something happens. Dozens, hundreds, thousands and millions start pulling it. The kinetic force is individual and collective. Individual intent and purpose become collective. No one is forcing, coaxing, motivating anyone. Yet everyone is pulling as if this is the sole, uplifting, most important purpose in life. And yes, none of them people is riding the chariot. The joy is in pulling it.
Was there a particular question, one you could not easily answer, that became the seed for this book?
This book did not start with a question. I entered with a camera and started filming what I saw. It was as if a documentary and I was capturing the narrative as it was forming. Unfolding. Even as frequently you see I was jumping into the frame. Yet, in essence, I was on reportage.
Every book leaves its author with unfinished business. What remains unanswered for you after The Day the Chariot Moved?
I do not know. You make me wonder. I will tell you when I get the answer.
Your role as Chairman of Odisha Skill Development Authority was a departure from the corporate path. How did public service change your vocabulary of leadership?
I saw a number of politicians and public officials of outstanding calibre. They break the stereotype notions we carry. I saw the action response of leaders in a crisis like COVID. I saw how they work with scale. It made me feel that the private sector kind of leaders are often overrated. Romanticised. Every day, I learnt something new. Something significant. In the corporate world, if you push a millimetre, you move an inch. In the government, if you can push a millimetre, you can move a mile. The scale is mindboggling.
Which achievement in that role still makes you smile quietly to yourself?
It is all in the book. You will meet so many people in the book who will uplift you, rethink your life’s purpose, and inspire you to see yourself differently. You will meet Muni Tigga, a tribal girl from Sundargarh who hauls a locomotive engine with the Indian Railways. You will meet Kalika Sahoo who has studied up to high school pass from a village who today assembles Boeing aircraft body. You will meet Kamini Kanchan who is building a small business by herself, whom every now and then, men come and say, you are a small girl, what do you know about running a business? Give it over to me. You will meet Basanti Pradhan, once a goatherd in a village in Balangir who has become a Line Supervisor in Anugraha Fashions which is a leading garment manufacturer in Tiruppur. You will meet Soumendra Das, an ITI graduate who employs seventy workers and has a revenue of 80 crores. These women and men make me smile quietly, even as I have moved on after working with the Government for eight intense years. Their reality is my abiding dream.
In India, CSR often risks becoming a performative checklist. How do we make it a genuine instrument of social transformation?
First of all, leaders at the top need to understand that a business is also a power of change in society. It begins by seeing your enterprise as a platform, not just a donor of money to charities. That platform is a people platform. Using it, people come together, form communities and use a part of their collective energies to support causes close to their heart. Some donate blood by doing four blood drives every year, using the company cafeteria. Some form a group that does outreach in schools and colleges in the local community. Some others take up sustainability projects and start by energy saving at work. The list of possibilities is massive. Mindtree runs a reform project in a jail that brings murder convicts serving life term to run an IT back office. In all this, in the process of these engagements, leaders see volunteerism blossom at work. It is a very powerful driver of character and culture building within the organisation. It is also the foundation of creativity and leadership qualities like taking initiative, practising collaboration and solving problems. Thus, the enterprise, by looking at itself as a platform, becomes a community of communities. In it, the idea of corporate social responsibility and individual social responsibility meld. Companies benefit from a socially conscientious workforce because they invariably make great employees.
What are you building now, and is it more for the world, or more for yourself?
Right now, I am sitting here, waiting for the phone to ring.
Ashutosh Kumar Thakur is a Bangalore-based management professional, literary critic and curator. He can be reached at ashutoshbthakur@gmail.com.