HFS Challenger: Enterprise Minds

At a glance

The latest firm to receive the coveted HFS Challenger accolade is Enterprise Minds (EM), Inc., for its innovation-led approach to challenging the legacy service models that have traditionally focused on labor and process. EM champions automation as the default, not the outcome.

EM is a Silicon Valley-based automation-first services firm founded in 2017 by Bharath Mundlapudi, a former Netflix and Yahoo engineer. With more than 800 engineers, PhDs, and technology specialists across four continents, EM serves supply chain, healthcare, satellite, banking, original equipment manufacturers (OEM), energy, and tech clients. Its strength lies in combining engineering rigor with a strong culture of agility, experimentation, and cognitive intelligence.

EM focuses on horizontal artificial intelligence (AI), organizing engineering intelligence across enterprise layers—from infrastructure to business logic. It delivers this through a modular automation fabric, not disconnected tools.

Core capabilities revolve around engineering-led automation

EM’s full-stack engineering capability across the automation lifecycle, from building cognitive agents to optimizing AI-powered workflows, defines the company. Its service portfolio includes these core capabilities:

• Product engineering develops scalable, secure, and intelligent platforms and apps across embedded systems, cloud-native environments, and enterprise architectures.
• Automation engineering delivers process mining, intelligent automation (robotic process automation [RPA] + AI + agents), workflow optimization, and change management to create automation at scale. EM built the AutoX solution for intelligent automation.
• Intelligence engineering bridges AI, data science, and software development to deploy cognitive automation, digital twins, and agent-based reasoning across industries.
• Application engineering modernizes and manages enterprise applications with full lifecycle support, automation layering, and system interoperability.
• SAP and cybersecurity management covers SAP S/4HANA, compliance, identity and access management (IAM), vulnerability management, and SOC support for regulated industries.
• Innovation-as-a-service capabilities include intellectual property (IP) as a service, research as a service, and startup as a service (e-hub).

EM’s capabilities give enterprise clients rapid access to cutting-edge solutions, emerging tech partnerships, and rapid prototyping capabilities.

Speed, IP, and outcomes are at the core of client relationships

EM’s philosophy is to automate itself before automating the client, with a vision for automation everywhere. It brings product thinking and engineering velocity into every engagement and strives to deliver reusable, scalable solutions instead of reinventing
the wheel.

Its talent model focuses on rapid upskilling and internal IP libraries to compress ramp-up time and accelerate delivery. EM also stresses extreme accountability; its teams are empowered to move quickly and own business outcomes.

HFS’ take

Enterprise Minds is the kind of firm that enterprise leaders increasingly crave but rarely find: bold, highly technical, automation-first, and outcome-obsessed.

It lacks the brand recognition and bench strength of a Tier 1 firm, but that’s exactly the point. EM doesn’t want to look like a scaled-out IT services firm; it wants to be the engineering and AI co-pilot for the enterprise.

Its horizontal AI mindset, backed by cognitive agents, reusable IP, and an innovation-led delivery model, sets it apart from legacy service providers. It’s already earning trust from Fortune 500 CIOs by delivering tangible savings, IP-led licensing models, and faster time to impact.

Challenges remain, notably in building brand visibility and competing at scale, but its deep technical leadership and embedded agility make it one of the most forward-looking challengers in the market today.

Client case studies

Challenger fact sheet