It has been a day of high drama in the Indian IT industry. In the country's first hostile takeover bid in the IT sector, infrastructure giant Larsen & Toubro (L&T) on Monday made an offer to buy up to 66 percent stake in the Mindtree for around Rs 10,800 crore.

L&T has entered into a deal to buy Cafe Coffee Day owner VG Siddhartha's 20.32 percent stake in Mindtree and has also placed an order with brokers to pick up another 15 percent of the company shares from the open market.

Subsequent to these deals, L&T would make an open offer to buy additional 31 percent stake through an open offer. All the three acquisitions are being done at Rs 980 per share, a premium of 1.8 percent over Monday's closing price of Mindtree on the BSE.

L&T would pay Siddhartha Rs 3,269 crore and Rs 5,030 crore for the open offer, as per filings made by L&T and Mindtree.

On Tuesday, the L&T top officials held a press conference to justify their decision. L&T said there is no "hostility" and they are doing this straight from the heart. They have also left the doors open to negotiate with Mindtree's promoters.

However, the Mindtree promoters are in no mood to budge. They hit back at L&T calling the hostile takeover attempt as a "grave threat" and one that could lead to "value destruction".

Mindtree promoters claimed that they are hopeful of getting support from domestic and institutional investors.

In an interview to CNBC-TV18, G Chokkalingam, founder and MD, Equinomics Research & Advisory; Shriram Subramanian, founder and MD, Ingovern, and Urmil Shah, vice president and research analyst, IDBI Capital, discussed the battle between the two corporates.

On Siddhartha selling his stake to L&T, Subramanian said, “If you look at it very objectively, Siddhartha has seed funded Mindtree, he has been with the founders for almost 20 years now. He has been a white knight when Ashok Soota sold his shares and he bought those shares. He had shown a lot of confidence in the management and the founders of Mindtree for over 20 years. Now, when he is in dire need, he has chosen to sell. He engaged with founders, it is not that he sold surreptitiously. He has engaged with the founders, with the management and sold it at a price which he believes is right.”

Chokkalingam said, “It is an emotional issue for Mindtree promoters; one can understand by the way they have nurtured. However, the country has adopted the capitalist path of development and the stock market also purely is governed by market principles rather than socialist principles. Therefore, to call this not proper I do not think is a right allegation.”

On minority shareholders, Shah said, “The deal which L&T had announced at Rs 980 per share and allowing such a significant chunk of stake changing hands without impacting the stock to a great extent was good from a minority shareholder point of view. Their intent to buy 15 percent stake from open market also is good for minority shareholders.”