What’s common to Genpact, WNS, Firstsource, and Cognizant? Yes, they are all tech companies but they also originally began as captive arms of global biggies — GE, British Airways, ICICI Bank, and Dun & Bradstreet, respectively — before branching out as standalone service providers.

Yet another company joining this list is Mindsprint, part of global agri major Olam Group. It had started off as Olam Technology and Business Services back when Olam launched in 1989.

“For many years we have operated under the captive setup, which included basic technology services and back-office services for Olam,” Suresh Sundararajan, co-founder and CEO, Mindsprint, says.

When Olam undertook a corporate restructuring in 2020, to split the business into two different groups to unlock more value, Mindsprint decided to carve itself out as an independent technology firm, he adds.

As it comes of age and secures its identity, Mindsprint currently earns annual revenue of $100-150 million and targets $375-400 million by 2030.

It is still fully owned by Olam Group, which has, however, stated it would look to “responsibly divest” non-core assets (including Mindsprint).

Entrepreneurial spirit

On the rationale behind the spin-off, Sundararajan says the defining DNA of Olam is an entrepreneurial spirit, which led to the decision to let Mindsprint build its own future.

“So today, even Olam’s business does not come to us by right. We have to earn every dollar of the business and have multi-year agreements with them,” says Sundararajan, who has been with the Olam Group in various roles for 29 years now.

Today, with what he calls a ‘land and expand’ strategy, Mindsprint has gradually built relationships and served 45 customers.

“We are starting with small work for them, but hope to expand it to strong recurring revenue,” he adds. Interestingly, Olam still brings in 90 per cent of Mindsprint’s revenue and, in 4-5 years, the aim is to increase the share of other customers to 40 per cent, he says.

Managing change is an area that Mindsprint has a lot experience in, given its own metamorphosis.

“The IT services or global business services (GBS) concept is not really relevant any more, after the maturity of AI,” he says.

“Agentic AI is converting back-office services into outcome-based services; companies now have to bill clients on outcome rather than how many people we deploy to do the work. So, we have also changed our BPO-style services to intelligent enterprise operations,” he adds.

Transforming from a captive to a standalone tech services firm, it is now adopting a “solutions and accelerators” approach to serve enterprises.

Take, for instance, its proprietary product SprintAP. It is a touchless payment processing platform that has automated all aspects of the process, right from recognising and scanning an invoice from emails (across languages) to orchestrating all the workflows to finally sending payment instructions and setting up a chatbot to answer queries on the status of invoices. It is now a boon to CFOs, he notes.

Tech services, inclusive of data and digital product engineering and enterprise applications services, are the largest contributor to the company’s earnings. This is followed by the intelligent enterprise operations (erstwhile BPO services) and the niche cybersecurity services.

Well-rounded approach

While Mindsprint was born from a food and agri business background, it today serves a variety of other sectors also, including agri retail CPG, manufacturing, and health sciences.

“We are also consciously investing in consulting capabilities in some of these domains to ensure we have a well-rounded approach,” Sundararajan explains. “We are also not too dependent on North America. We have been getting a lot of inbound inquiries from the Middle East and APAC, which made us quickly pivot and expand teams by having people in Malaysia, Singapore, India, and Dubai,” he adds.

The company’s primary delivery centres are in Chennai and Bengaluru, and it is on an expansion spree in both locations.

Mindsprint opened a new office in Bengaluru, in June, spread across 17,000 sq ft, and this came on the heels of the recent expansion in Chennai in May.

Its 600-plus workforce in Bengaluru is largely into technology while Chennai, with more than double the strength, hosts employees across technology and operations.

So, is Mindsprint a start-up or an incumbent in this volatile world of technology?

“When things change around me at a hectic pace, I can move my 3,200 people faster than somebody who needs to transform their one lakh-plus team,” says Sundararajan. “We are small but, at the same time, we have the backing of a large group. I’d like to believe that we have the best of both things,” he quips. It’s a good mindspace to be in.

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Published on August 18, 2025