MindTree has 2006 floatation in mind

Bangalore-based MindTree Consulting, which has announced a spending plan of $100 million in Hyderabad over the next five years, has indicated that it would be comfortable with a public listing in 2006.

The $50 million IT consulting and software services player has also decided to start two new business lines of offering testing services and high end technology support.

Ashok Soota, chairman and managing director of MindTree Consulting, told Business Standard that MindTree would look at a public listing only once it nudged revenues in the region of about $100 million.

"We have always been prudent spenders and we do not have any immediate capital requirements. We had raised about $14 million in our second round just before the September 11 attacks in the US and still have about $11 million left with us," Soota said.

In its first round of funding MindTree had raised $9.5 million in August 1999 and at present investors hold close to 40 per cent in the company while promoters and employees hold the rest.

Of the $100 million that MindTree is promising to spend in Hyderabad over the next half a decade only about $25 million will be invested in infrastructure related costs while the rest $75 million would be revenue expenditure.

Over the next five years MindTree will recruit close to 2000 people for its Hyderabad centre. Revenues from the Hyderabad centre for the unlisted company are expected to touch about $60 million by the end of the fifth year.