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Coffee, Cotton… and Code: How Mindsprint Is Rewriting the Tech Services Playbook
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When you spin out of one of the world’s largest agribusiness supply chains with the ambition to reimagine enterprise services, people take notice.
In this episode, Suresh Sundararajan, CEO and Co-Founder of Mindsprint, joins HFS CEO Phil Fersht to unpack what it really means to be an AI-first services firm, and how legacy becomes leverage when you’re bold enough to build.
From training 3,000+ employees on AI tools to launching outcome-based pricing models for P2P and procurement, Suresh shares his honest view on tech disruption, change management, and why the small and agile are beating the big and slow.
What You’ll Hear in 30 Minutes
• The birth of Mindsprint from agribusiness giant Olam
• What being “AI-first” means inside and out
• Scaling AI adoption across a 3,200-person workforce
• Why change management—not tech—is the bottleneck
• How outcome-based pricing is disrupting traditional service models
• Why smaller firms are thriving in the new enterprise tech landscape
• Suresh’s personal mission to lead by doing—and upskill everyone
Guest Snapshots
Suresh is the CEO and Co-Founder of Mindsprint, a next-gen tech services firm born out of Olam Group—one of the world’s largest agri-business supply chains. With over 30 years at Olam, Suresh brings a rare combination of operational depth, strategic foresight, and entrepreneurial grit.
He’s on a mission to prove that smaller, sharper firms like Mindsprint can move faster, lead AI transformation, and offer differentiated services at scale—all while being deeply human-centered in execution.
Timestamps
00:00 – Welcome and origins of Mindsprint
01:15 – Spinning out of Olam: The backstory
03:29 – Why Mindsprint chose independence over division
06:57 – What it *really* means to be AI-first
08:57 – How Suresh trained 95% of employees on AI
09:42 – The reality of change management
12:29 – What happens when AI frees up time?
14:42 – How jobs and skillsets are evolving
17:02 – Adding 45 new logos in 18 months
19:40 – From FTEs to outcome-based pricing
21:58 – Selling services like software
24:49 – Global expansion and unexpected growth in APAC
27:00 – Advice for tech and non-tech leaders on AI transformation
30:13 – The productivity + innovation equation
31:44 – Wrap-up and parting thoughts
Explore More
• Mindsprint: https://www.Mindsprint.org
• Suresh Sundararajan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sureshsundararajan
• Phil Fersht on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pfersht
• HFS Research on Agentic AI: https://www.hfsresearch.com
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to 'From the Horse's Mouth'
00:00:12
Speaker
You're listening to From the Horse's Mouth, intrepid conversations with Phil First. Ready to meet the disruptors who are guiding us to the new great utopia by reshaping our world and pushing past corporate spin for honest conversations about the future impact of current and emerging technologies?
00:00:30
Speaker
Tune in now.
Meet Suresh Sundararajan: CEO of MindSprint
00:00:35
Speaker
Welcome to the latest edition of From the Horse's Mouth. I'm Phil First and joining me today is Suresh Sundararajan, who's the CEO and co-founder of a company called MindSprint, who you may have been hearing about in the industry, which, well, why don't you, Saref, why don't you tell us a bit about the story? Because it's it's a fascinating evolution in our industry.
MindSprint's Evolution and Rebranding
00:01:05
Speaker
from but I'm part of a group called Olam, which is based out of Singapore. It's a publicly traded company in Singapore. It's one of the world's largest supply chain manager of agricultural commodities, right from cocoa to coffee to cotton to grains to spices to nuts.
00:01:25
Speaker
And I've been with this group for 30 About four years back, Ulam embarked on a corporate restructuring where we were breaking and the multiple businesses into two distinct groups to unlock value for shareholders.
00:01:40
Speaker
At that point in time, we had an opportunity to carve out and set up our captive technology and business services into a separate independent company.
00:01:52
Speaker
And that is what we call as MindSprint. So MindSprint is nothing but what was the captive ah technology and chat services provider for the OLAM group. It was rebranded, re-christined as MindSprint in 2022 as part of our efforts to ah branch out of OLAM and build an independent tech services business like many other players who have done it similarly over the last several years, Phil.
Differentiation through Agility and Innovation
00:02:22
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, ah obviously the first well-known version of this was, I think, WNS. WNS came out of British Airways as call center.
00:02:33
Speaker
Then we had GenPact was general at GE's finance accounting division. So it's interesting to hear about how MindSprint is evolving. so So what is the game plan in terms of differentiating yourself in the market? Why should clients be excited to work with you guys?
00:02:52
Speaker
Yeah, a few things I would say. First of all, I also want to add that the reason why, see we had two options. We could have broken the captive technology team and given to the two business groups and be done away with it.
00:03:06
Speaker
Or we could carve out and set this up as an independent company. We chose a later because the underlying DNA of Olam is an entrepreneurial spirit of how you can unlock opportunities and create value out of everything that you get in your site.
00:03:23
Speaker
So Olam being very entrepreneurial, we chose a later path of setting up MindSprint as an independent company. And when I took on this job of developing Mindsprint on its own independent journey to meet our objectives, I was a bit skeptical, frankly, to say, what would a small company of Mindsprint size would be able to do in a very fiercely contested space where there are behemoths, multi-billion dollar companies, very deeply entrenched in terms of competing on cost and capabilities?
00:03:53
Speaker
What can we offer? I think for me,
Embracing an AI-First Approach
00:03:56
Speaker
a few things stood out. The first thing is, as technology is rapidly changing, The change itself gives an opportunity for new and small players to be more adaptive and differentiate compared to larger companies. I believe large companies will take a long time to change, like a large ship taking a large radius to turn, a small boat could do that much faster.
00:04:22
Speaker
So that gives me an even level playing field. If Mindsprint is able to differentiate and bring out offerings that are superior compared to the large players, we have a good chance to grow this business.
00:04:37
Speaker
The second part of it, the smallness of Mindsprint allows me to be more agile and responsive to the needs of customers in trying to work with them to get their outcomes.
00:04:51
Speaker
And I've often seen in the tech space, there is dearth for a combination of world-class consulting combined with world-class execution in delivering the transformation programs to customers.
00:05:06
Speaker
So we are trying to do in Mindsprint, how do we bring this consultative approach where we try to challenge the problem statement of the customers and back it with world-class execution?
00:05:17
Speaker
So Mindsprint is small in terms of the size, but Yet, it has a backing of a large group of OLAM and MindSprint has singularly helped scale up OLAM from nothing to be a 50 billion giant.
How is AI Disrupting Tech?
00:05:33
Speaker
So that reflects the compounding capabilities and experiences that we have been able to build that we can offer to the customers. So you're talking a lot about having an AI first approach with Mindsprings. But what do you mean by this? I mean, you talk about it disrupting our industry, but what's really happening? I mean, there's no actual data to show that AI is replacing jobs at the moment. So why is it disrupting so much in your opinion?
00:06:02
Speaker
This change that we are seeing in technology, like in ah at every few decades, we have a wave of tech disruption facing us. But what we are witnessing now is probably similarly disrupting the tech industry itself.
00:06:18
Speaker
Most of the tech changes in the past has helped companies in many industries transform to offer their products and services. But this change that we are seeing is actually impacting the tech industry the most.
00:06:32
Speaker
So for me, when I mean AI first, if I'm going to have a conversation with a potential customer of how I can embed AI in offering our services, to be able to instill confidence in the customer, I should be able to prove that MindSprint is AI first.
00:06:48
Speaker
So for me, when I say AI first, it is how MindSprint does things internally in terms of how we function as an organization, And then how Mindsprint brings AI capabilities to customers.
00:07:02
Speaker
These are the two ways that I would measure. If there is no way I can demonstrate to my customers that Mindsprint is using AI in daily functioning, there is no way I would be able to convince a customer that we are an AI-first company.
00:07:14
Speaker
And one small example for that is I wanted to make sure at least there is a base level literacy for each of the employees in Mindsprint. So I made it a point to undergo a four-hour certification program online myself on a weekend and mandated every single of the 3,200 employees to go through that programs.
00:07:35
Speaker
Of course, I could not hit 100%, but 95% of Mindsprint employees got trained on that. And we have then secondly published 22 tools for all the employees internally to use AI.
00:07:48
Speaker
Doesn't matter they are in finance function or HR function or they are a software engineer coding. Everybody has to embrace, embed and use some part of ai I think for me that is being AI first.
00:08:02
Speaker
The second part is in every single service that we are offering, whether it is a digital platform engineering or it's advanced data analytics, how we are bringing AI when we offer these solutions to customers. That's how I would define as being an AI-first company.
00:08:19
Speaker
and What are the challenges and what are the opportunities that you're seeing when as you're trying to train your own staff on this?
Overcoming AI Adoption Challenges
00:08:27
Speaker
I mean, maybe talk a bit about the challenges first. do you feel this is like natural for a lot of your team to adopt or quite challenging? That's huge, yeah it's it's a big challenge. I think it will be, it's not easy because, you know, like any other change, people are very skeptical about the impact of AI.
00:08:48
Speaker
On the other extreme, people want a 100% solution to be delivered by an AI. Even that's not going to be possible. So these two creates a lot of issues in change management.
00:09:01
Speaker
For example, I question somebody, why are you not using a specific AI tool, say, for example, creating a PowerPoint presentation or creating a podcast or creating a video?
00:09:11
Speaker
Somebody comes and tells me, or that is not foolproof. I have to do a lot of work. But my response is, of course, it's not going to 100%. You have to use AI as an amplifier.
00:09:23
Speaker
So for us at every single level, it is about educating of how we have to change to survive in the long run. That if my my teams don't change, then we can't survive as a company.
00:09:36
Speaker
And that is a sense of urgency I'm trying to instill by personally demonstrating wherever I could use AI and show to people, challenge them, if I can do, why can't you?
00:09:50
Speaker
And I'm saying if I can do, because I'm not a technology person. I'm leading technology company, but my background is finance, right? Like today, I created a survey using AI on Microsoft Forms to be sent to 10 people in my team solicit feedback on some things I'm doing.
00:10:09
Speaker
Before, I would have never done this. AA made it possible for me to create a survey in 10 minutes flat, right? And this is a real vindication of the possibilities that AA can do for people across levels.
00:10:21
Speaker
So, I think it's constantly creating a sense of urgency, creating training programs that are relevant for people to upskill. Measuring the maturity of AI periodically, that how every employee is onto this embracing AI, all will, over a period of time, i believe will increase the maturity of a of an organization, and specifically Mindsprint.
AI's Impact on Workforce Dynamics
00:10:45
Speaker
So as staff get more productive and faster and slicker using AI to do things, do you think that they're going to use the additional time that they're freeing out to do other things? Or are you worried that they might just start working less?
00:11:05
Speaker
I'll just like to throw that one out there. I think that's the existential challenge that we have as human beings. And it's not only for employees of my company, I think for everyone in every industry.
00:11:17
Speaker
If we are successful in adapting ai in the right way, what does it do? It releases our bandwidth significantly.
00:11:29
Speaker
If it releases our bandwidth, what will you do? Are we equipped to think? Are we equipped to go back to our innate capabilities of innovation?
00:11:40
Speaker
Or will we struggle? Because the last two, three decades of corporate existence has been in meetings and emails and all that stuff, right?
00:11:52
Speaker
Seldom you will find blocks of calendars free where somebody is sitting and thinking. So the challenge is how do you encourage people to invest more time in being innovative?
00:12:05
Speaker
And that's not only for tech employees. I think that's going to be a universal of challenge. And I feel one of the reasons why employees are resistant to adapt AI is the sudden vacuum that will be created in terms of the time that is released.
00:12:22
Speaker
How will you spend? How will you justify your existence, right? And that's going to be an existential question. i think collectively, we have to believe that AI will help us to amplify the human potential.
00:12:36
Speaker
So we have to go back to spending time thinking about solving problems with the help of technology. And that's going to be a challenge. It's not an easy one. So what sort of skill sets do you think we're going to start to look at as we become AI first? Is it that the way we do jobs are changing now.
00:12:55
Speaker
So you don't need five people working on your general ledger, for example, or 10 people working on accounts payable when things can be done faster and slicker. Do we start to broaden jobs out so people start doing new activities, do you think? Or we're just going to do more with less?
Outcome-Based Pricing and AI Integration
00:13:13
Speaker
I think it'll largely be, in my opinion, more with less, where you have workforce managing agents or A-related work in executing what they were doing with a lot more people.
00:13:31
Speaker
For example, if you want to talk about software engineers, If Claude is a great tool to work with, instead of having 20 engineers on a project to develop something, we'll probably have two very good engineers managing that with Claude, right?
00:13:50
Speaker
So that's where amplification comes. So the pyramid will change in some way. which would mean that ah you have to upskill and reskill people to do something else because the core stuff can be done with far less people in many ways more effectively than before.
00:14:08
Speaker
So you need people then, i think, who are naturally motivated and curious who like trying new things. the My fear is certain people who just like to do the same task the same way their entire career, and suddenly you don't need them to do that task with nearly as much intensity.
00:14:26
Speaker
They've got to start to diversify and learn how to use these tools to help their jobs. I think you're absolutely right with ah driving your own team to use these tools most effectively. like So how is this impacting your overall business? Is this like, you know, noticed you opened an office in Australia, you're you're trying to expand geographically.
00:14:46
Speaker
How do you see this evolving in the next two to three years? I think for a small ah player, Phil, it's actually so far been encouraging for us. From the time we embarked this journey of going down the path of expanding our customer base outside of Olam, I'm very glad to say we have 45 logos that we have added on in the last one and half years.
00:15:12
Speaker
And that's for me a good list of logos, companies from 1 billion 20 billion in size, companies from North America, from Middle East, from Australia, and New Zealand and Asia Pacific.
00:15:24
Speaker
And that shows that what we have to offer ah resonates with customers where in instances where we are demonstrating that for a particular use case or a project, the way we pitch for a proposal demonstrates that we are bringing ai into play, which the customers can feel and see in terms of the cost of a project or the time that it takes to deliver a project.
00:15:55
Speaker
helps us to win those projects. And we have won these projects purely on those merits. And that's a very encouraging response where probably our customers believe that MindSprint could deliver their projects with AI and they can reap the benefits of that in terms of faster time for execution and lower cost.
00:16:19
Speaker
So 45 logos for is a big deal. And so we are able to win that. How's this changing you as a services firm? Like, are you still pricing in the old way here?
00:16:29
Speaker
This is an engineer, you're going to spend this amount per hour or per week or per year? Or are you actually starting to think about selling services differently as AI infuses so much more of these activities?
00:16:44
Speaker
I think, Phil, that's a gradual journey in, for example, our classic BPO offering has been re-christined as intelligent enterprise operations because we want to move into an outcome-based pricing and not FTE-based pricing.
00:17:03
Speaker
To that effort effect, we have launched two offerings in the market, Sprint AP, which is simply a procure-to-pay solution, and Procure Sprint, which is a procurement solution, something that allows companies to manage procurement in terms of supplier management, category management, and everything else.
00:17:23
Speaker
Now, both these are agentic AI platforms. but For example, in Sprint AP, I can have a discussion with the customer, like, I will charge you 70 cents per invoice.
00:17:38
Speaker
It doesn't matter how many people I have. In the past, it used to be, you know, I will have 20 people to process half a million invoices. So your cost is going to be like this. So we could really offer an outcome based pricing for procure to pay using an agentic AI.
00:17:56
Speaker
Same thing is for ProcureSprint. So we are trying to convert some of these offerings into outcome-based. We are yet to progress and mature further on classic services like SAP to move into an outcome-based pricing.
00:18:12
Speaker
But we are developing a game plan of how we can talk about outcome in all the offerings rather than talking about a time and material or an FTE-based pricing.
00:18:24
Speaker
by So the most really selling services as if it's software, right? You're selling the consumability and the impact of what you're doing for clients versus just been paying for labor, right? So it's how do you do that and how do you price it? And I guess experience tells. So do you have, how many of these new logos do you feel are moving towards that model or do you feel and you start with the traditional model and you try and evolve them to the outcome of it?
00:18:53
Speaker
I would say a small part of these customers are already in that model, but the rest of the companies are more like we want to first work with them in the way that they are comfortable, but still talk about outcome and see how we can develop our new offerings with them, which are outcome based.
Services as Software: Industry Solutions
00:19:12
Speaker
So I think it's a gradual journey for us. but In all of our discussions on any projects or proposals that we have, outcome is a central theme that we are discussing, which is a significant shift from the past.
00:19:26
Speaker
So whatever be the project, even if it is a data analytic project, if it's a digital platform engineering, there is a discussion on outcome, right? And in some cases, we are bold enough to say that we will put fees at risk, which are tied to outcome.
00:19:42
Speaker
And that really changes the game. I would say in the next couple of years, that would be more prevalent, more seen in many things that we do in terms of how we can bring in outcome-based pricing.
00:19:52
Speaker
But to answer the other thing that you said, services as a software, as you have coined, what we are doing is we have realized that just peddling services is not relevant in today's context, right?
00:20:05
Speaker
Not just because everybody's talking about AI, because people want outcome. which will be a combination of services and pre-built accelerators and solutions that you can give.
00:20:17
Speaker
So we are well positioned to do that because coming off of our Olam legacy, we already own a lot of IPs and we have built a lot of accelerators and we want to build more such things for the industries that we are focusing on, which is food, agriculture, retail, CPG, manufacturing and life sciences.
00:20:36
Speaker
So we could have a jumpstart discussion with customers. oh this the problem we're addressing. We have this pre-built accelerator. The solution could fit in with some tweaks and that's how we could go. And I think that very well syncs with what you are calling as services of software, right?
00:20:51
Speaker
So in fact, we have... team within Mindsprint called as a future forward lab. There it's all about, you know, like a startup team of engineers and a product specialists and UI, UX designers working to create these prebuilt solutions and platforms that could be deployed faster for our customers in those select industries.
Geographical Expansion and Market Impact
00:21:13
Speaker
Interesting. So being based in Singapore, headquartered there you obviously do a lot of business outside of the US. How is the current tariff situation impacting the flow of business and the conversations that you're having with clients, Suresh?
00:21:29
Speaker
Phil, for us, I've not had seen the impact of that of biting our business in any way, because I think we're very small and wherever we are making an entry, it is using the differentiation tip of the spear, if I can call, that MindSprint has something very different on advanced data analytics, on digital platform engineering, on SAP RISE,
00:21:52
Speaker
or procure strength. So the discussions are going on and we have been able to unlock the tech budgets from our customers and we've been able to support them. But I should say, when I started this journey, I was thinking ah North America will be the single most and by far the only market for us.
00:22:13
Speaker
That has changed a bit in the sense that we are getting a lot of traction from Middle East and Asia Pacific. So much so, in the original plan, I did not envisage building a team of sales and marketing professionals in this part of the region, but now I have almost half of my team in Middle East and Asia-Pacific.
00:22:33
Speaker
So a lot of companies in Asia-Pacific which are on the transition into cloud modernization, data modernization, SAP modernization, that gives us good opportunities as a Singapore-based company.
00:22:45
Speaker
But U.S. continues to be a big focus market. So far, I don't think I've seen ah significant impact of tariff on what we've been able to convert. I think everything you've spoken about, Suresh, are the benefits of being a sort of more agile, nimble, smaller player in the market. Because I think a lot of ah the big shops and services are really struggling right now to adapt. But I think you seem to be benefiting from your size and a sound up the culture you have. And you have an engineering culture within the company.
Advice for Leaders on AI Integration
00:23:15
Speaker
So last question then based on everything that you've been experiencing, what advice would you give to leaders, other leaders looking to incorporate AI into their organizations what have you learned most in the last couple of years?
00:23:29
Speaker
Now, I would split this into two parts, Phil. I think an advice to tech companies, this is cannibalism at its peak. If we ignore the Kodak moment for tech companies, and then tech companies will die.
00:23:42
Speaker
Because this, as I said earlier, has the most profound impact on tech companies first and then industries that we are serving. So any tech company leader should really understand that and make it very clear that AI first agenda is the only way to not grow but to survive and grow.
00:24:01
Speaker
For non-tech companies, it's about and recognizing that AI is going to be a significant factor that will change the way organizations are structured and are manned.
00:24:16
Speaker
The role of tech through AI is going to change, for example, org structures where you will not need, as we discussed, so many people doing tasks. So if you do a five-year and 10-years forward projections of what org structures could look like, it would be very different. So how today's leaders can look at AI-led company in the respective industries be?
00:24:42
Speaker
And that's going to be very different. Like you said, people should be equipped to think more than work more because you don't need so many people to work more. The work will be done by something else.
00:24:54
Speaker
So this is related to, in some ways, the tech maturity of the organization and taking that leap of faith of how will they be prepared for changes that's going to happen in five years and 10 years timeframe.
00:25:08
Speaker
In many ways, similar to the digital disruption era, where people were sitting quiet before startups came and ate their lunch. Now, in this case, it's about really how you can offer your products and services in very different ways enabling AI. There are two dimensions that the technology will impact these companies in any industry. One is by unleashing significant productivity benefits.
00:25:35
Speaker
So, You don't need so many people to do many things. Many corporate functions will change the way they work. Finance, marketing, HR, sales.
00:25:46
Speaker
They can just completely be automated in many ways. So that's productivity. The second way in which, the important way in which it will make a difference is for a CEO to think how will the current AI technology or emerging technologies will help them to offer new products and new services that they otherwise could not do in the past.
00:26:08
Speaker
And that I think nobody is thinking. Today, because of LLMs, everybody's talking about productivity. I can create a PowerPoint, I can create a video, I can build these agents. But I think at top of the pyramid, it's about even offering services and products in a very different way that we're not able to think today.
00:26:23
Speaker
Well, thinking about, I've really enjoyed hearing what's full approach to how you're approaching AI, how you're developing it within the organization and you've articulated so well many of the things you're
Future of Service Firms: Specialization and Growth
00:26:36
Speaker
doing. And I'm getting so many questions from the media and the press about why are the mid-caps growing so much faster and all this sort of stuff. And then you know you get down to the smaller scale organizations. I really believe in in a couple of years, we're going to have many more services firms emerging who are much smaller in scale and size because companies, clients want to work with specialists, companies who are very focused in, like i was talking to one services firm the other day, which just does data breaks services.
00:27:07
Speaker
And they're growing at 30% a year. They're like 60 million in revenue. There's another one, which is just doing S4 HANA implementations and that sort of thing. So i really do think we're moving into a broader market with a lot of opportunity and we're going to see a lot of small businesses appearing all over the place because we're in an industry of intimacy and real need.
00:27:28
Speaker
So with that, I'd like to thank you very much for your time today, Suresh. It's been great hearing from you and look forward to sharing this with our network. Thank you, Phil. Thank you for hosting on your podcast. Lovely to have this chat and looking forward to meeting you soon.
00:27:42
Speaker
but Yeah, absolutely. Terrific. Thank you. Thank you.
Closing Remarks and Engagement
00:27:49
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in to From the Horse's Mouth, intrepid conversations with Phil First. Remember to follow Phil on LinkedIn and subscribe and like on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite platform for no-nonsense takes on the intricate dance between technology, business, and ideological systems.
00:28:09
Speaker
Got something to add to the discussion? Let's have it. Drop us a line at fromthehorsesmouth at hfsresearch.com or connect with Phil on LinkedIn.