On a high note

ICE PEOPLE: John Winchester

John Winchester

He cannot figure out why two beautiful women, Aishwarya Rai and Madhuri Dixit, wasted their time on "the weak man (Shahrukh Khan) who drank a lot" in the Bollywood blockbuster Devdas. Yet John Winchester, vice president (engineering & technology) at Impetus Technologies, saw the film at least 10 times and loved it.

It is not just Hindi films that he loves about India. He is quite taken in by the country's classical music "� his favourite vocalists are Kumar Gandharva and Bhimsen Joshi. He is also an ardent admirer of the Pakistani ghazal singer Ghulam Ali.

But this may be just the beginning of Winchester's love affair with India "� he shifted bag and baggage to Indore barely six months ago. His wife, a school teacher, will join him only next month.

The 50-something Winchester, meanwhile, is already rocking at Impetus. He has formed a six-member band at the company, with the human resource manager, a tabla player, settling for playing the drums. The keyboard artist and singers are already in place.

"We play anything, from American rock to Hindi film music, and practise every Saturday," notes Winchester. His favourite jazz artiste is Peggy Lee.

Winchester's love for music is understandable. He is a trained guitarist. After majoring in music (guitar performance) from the University of Georgia and acquiring a master's degree in music from San Francisco University, he gave himself 10 years after college to see whether he could make a living from music. "I started playing at concerts, but realised that you can only break even in this field," he says.

Without wasting time, he did a master's degree in physics and "got into serious scientific computing."

He enrolled at Washington University for a doctorate in scientific computing but did not complete his Phd. In the early 1990s, he jumped into computer software programming and joined Nightfire, a small startup. Later, the company was bought over by Neustar Inc.

It was at Neustar that Winchester first came in touch with Impetus as the company wanted to move offshore. "I was very impressed with Impetus as it made 120 product deliveries to us in a year," he says.

So when Impetus promoter Praveen Kankaria made him an offer, he could not refuse. Why? "First was the excitement about India. The view of India from the US has changed. Earlier, India was a body shop. Now a certain level of maturity has been reached. Two, the company is going places," he says.

And Winchester wants to help the company grow, from 200 employees to 400 in a year's time. Also, still a lion's share of the company's revenue comes from software development.

"That must move to product development," he says. To compete in the global marketplace too, Indian IT will have to move up the value chain and control labour costs. "In China, the labour cost is half of India's," he warns.

And when he's not sounding these warning notes, he'll no doubt continue trumpeting the virtues of India.