For Ashok Soota, who is a rare octogenarian start-up founder, exercising his brain is a key to keeping him well.
“Keeping my mind engaged is another part of keeping my body also physically fit by doing whatever exercise I do,” says Soota.
That mantra seems to have worked well for the IT sector doyen, whose six-month-old venture Happiest Health has launched a magazine that hit stands this month, a mobile app, a metaverse platform for users to access health and wellness knowledge and programmes such as tai-chi and dance fitness, with plans to hold health summits going forward.
A doyen of India’s IT industry, Soota first led Wipro’s IT business for over a decade before leaving to start Mindtree with other Wipro employees. The company went public in 2007 and Soota struck out in 2011 again, starting Happiest Minds and breaking records with its IPO in 2020, which saw the biggest listing premium in a decade. Soota once again made headlines with a new entrepreneurial venture at age 79 when he veered into the health knowledge and tech industry in July 2022 with Happiest Health. Now at 80, he continues to lead both Happiest Minds and Happiest Health.
Speaking to Moneycontrol on the sidelines of the launch of the products of Happiest Health, the IT veteran says that he leads a nice, full life and that exercising his brain and keeping it up to date is a form of mental exercise which keep him well.
“I believe that a very important part of wellness is equally mental wellness. And just as you think of physical exercise, I believe exercising your brain, keeping it up to date, is a form of the mental exercise which keeps you well,” he said.
Soota also considers Warren Buffett as a role model. “If you look at him, he's literally either buying or creating a new company every day and making investments which literally run into hundreds of millions of dollars and such a wide spectrum. I'm only managing a very small part of the size of that. The teams which are very well set, which require maybe more value addition than day-to-day work….But they are also new startups, it keeps you going,” Soota said.
However, health knowledge and wellness are starkly different from his previous ventures, which were in the IT services industry. He says that everything up until now was B2B, and this is now B2C.
“We may have engaged some wonderful consultants, nobody can tell you the pitfalls you will face till you actually come across them and then tackle them. It's how well you tackle it after that that makes the difference. That happens even in a different type of business,” he said.
The problem is sometimes the opportunity, he says. “You handle it well, you get learning experiences from it, and then you replicate that everywhere. We've been through that exercise,” he quipped.
But Happiest Health wasn’t Soota’s first foray into health. In 2021, he set up SKAN, a charitable trust for medical research on ageing and neurological disorders.
“I will say that's my legacy. I'm pouring all the money that I have or am likely to have into SKAN and we're hoping to build a world-class institution. It takes a lot of time, takes terrific creation of the right talent, like any business but more difficult to get that talent in that field,” he said.
But it was setting up SKAN that spurred him to start Happiest Health, when they realised there was a lot going on that the common person had no idea about till the time they fall sick. With information, Soota says people will ask questions of their doctors, get a second opinion, look into other therapies, etc.
Among the services launched by Happiest Health was a metaverse platform, at a time that emerging tech is beginning to take a backseat due to larger macro conditions.
“It's no different from any new technology. They all go through the hype curve, where at one stage it looks like it will never take off. Then they say this is going to take over the whole world and everything will be there. Then, a little bit of realistic assessment starts…the technology for the metaverse is also evolving,” he said.
He adds that usability and the number of applications will increase, but states that growth in the metaverse world has shifted by two to four years.
However, based on the plans outlined by Happiest Health, the company is looking to foray into areas that companies such as Cult.fit and Practo operate in.
Soota, however, maintains that there is no equivalent comparison, and they are looking to meet “multiple needs in multiple forms”.
He says while they aren’t defining goals as the company is still evolving, Happiest Health is only likely to get a feel of the kind of organisation it wants to be in a year or two as things are still amorphous.
Taking Happiest Health public, however, is still some time away. Soota says he wants to stabilise the company first and will lay the groundwork over the next five years to stabilise the company for an IPO. Happiest Health is not seeking external capital and is funded internally.
“Our goal will be that will give them [stakeholders] better returns than they could have ever expected. I can't always say that we're going to keep breaking records… but we'll try and do the best possible. These are different businesses, different industries, different gamuts. But certainly, I don't see ourselves being inferior to anybody else in the healthcare space.”
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