The American musical Chicago was about to start. The theatre was a sea of brightly dressed and disciplined people. There were five Indians, though, on the edge of their seats, all in a celebratory mood, humming with excitement. Six years after starting Fractal in Mumbai, the co-founders—Srikanth Velamakanni, Pranay Agrawal, Nirmal Palaparthi, Pradeep Suryanarayan and Ramakrishna Reddy—had picked a chief executive officer from among them.