Ashok Soota has spent four decades in the Indian technology industry, leading three major IT firms and taking two of them public. Now, the 79-year-old is launching his latest venture with the goal of taking it to IPO in five years.
Happiest Health will be a rare Indian technology startup with an octogenarian founder when Soota turns 80 in November. He is basing the startup on his holistic view of health and wellbeing, drawing inspiration from Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., both of whom are in their nineties and still going strong.
“They embody the canon that work is exercise for the mind,” Soota stated in an interview, seated amid flowering orchids and a large aquarium full of fish on the roof garden of his sweeping Bangalore home.
The residence is located in the vibrant Koramangala neighbourhood, not far from where India’s IT outsourcing businesses first established decades ago. Soota was important in establishing what is now a $227 billion industry.
He was hired to lead Wipro Ltd. in 1984 and went on to make a success of the company’s outsourcing business while largely remaining in the shadow of its charismatic chairman, billionaire Azim Premji. Soota left in 1999 to co-found rival IT services company Mindtree Ltd., which went public in 2007.
In 2011, he repeated the process by establishing Happiest Mind Technologies Ltd., a digital services-focused outsourcer. He led it to a public debut in 2020 amid the pandemic as executive chairman, and it entered the billionaire ranks when its market value surpassed $2.5 billion last year.
Soota-founded ventures, like the broader tech sector, have recently faced headwinds. Happiest Minds, of which Soota owns approximately 53%, has lost a quarter of its value this year, resulting in a current market capitalization of $1.8 billion. Mindtree is down roughly one-third.
Soota appears to be unaffected. Happiest Health, his most recent venture, aspires to be a Google-meets-WebMD-meets-Mayo Clinic venture that assists people in navigating mental and physical health. It provides customers with access to previously unavailable health information, particularly on treatments and therapies that combine Western and Eastern practices.
Happiest Health’s long-term goal is to combine modern medicine and research with gentler therapies such as Ayurveda, naturopathy, yoga, and meditation through webinars, newsletters, short videos, and paid events.
Soota’s Bootstrapped the company, which has 90 employees, including doctors, scientists, and writers. Soota is building the company based on his experience managing hundreds of thousands of employees and his observations of their well-being, work-life balance, and relationship issues.
“For decades, Ashok Soota spotted IT services trends and figured out how to stay ahead,” said president of researcher CyberMedia Research, Thomas George. “He’s now chasing a new challenge.”
Every morning, Soota walks about five miles before swimming for 30 minutes. He also does yoga a couple of times per week.
The serial entrepreneur hinted that he may still have one or two startup ideas up his sleeve. Soota stated, “The median age of India’s technology workforce is 26 or 27 years.” He added, “Being in their company keeps me young and full of plans.”