Ritu Mangla and the business of earning trust

The first quarterly happy hour at Beta Soft Systems had a sensible agenda: mojitos, tapas, restaurant gift cards and a chance to see the people who usually worked somewhere else. On September 24, 2010, Ritu Mangla and her husband and co-founder, Vishal, gathered with consultants at Kaama Lounge in San Jose. In a business that sent its people into clients’ offices, getting everyone into the same room was an occasion in itself.

Five days later, there was another reason to gather. The Software Technology Park of India awarded Beta Soft an export excellence award at a ceremony in Chandigarh. A California consulting company, an Indian delivery operation and a team dispersed across customers’ workplaces: the geography of Mangla’s career was already taking shape. The drinks were local. The business had acquired a rather wider itinerary.

A company whose work happened elsewhere

Mangla co-founded Beta Soft Systems in May 2005 and served as its president and CEO. Her husband was vice president. Before that, she had worked in quality assurance and business analysis. Those disciplines put a person close to a useful question: does the thing actually work?

That question travels well from software into business. A client buys an outcome; someone must assemble the people, understand the assignment and follow through. Beta Soft’s work included application development, testing and business analysis. Its consultants often performed that work on client premises, carrying the company’s reputation into another organisation’s daily routine.

There is something pleasantly inconvenient about this business model. The product has opinions, ambitions and a commute. A staffing company must take people seriously because people are what the customer encounters. The happy-hour gathering offers a small, concrete glimpse of that responsibility: founders catching up with the consultants whose working days happened beyond their own office walls.

The next customer needed a different door

“The main reason for our success is quality,” Mangla said in 2010. She also wanted access to government customers. Beta Soft’s minority business certification mattered to her because it created opportunities to compete for public-sector work. The ambition was practical: qualify, bid, expand.

Business growth is often pictured as a staircase with a charmingly cooperative upward slope. Procurement supplies a more complicated floor plan. Before a prospective customer can choose a supplier, the supplier may have to meet requirements that enthusiasm cannot negotiate away. Mangla was discussing that doorway while Beta Soft was still a young company.

The distinction matters to her story. Commercial demand and public purchasing bring different routes to the same meeting. Her later career would include both. The early ambition gives those later contracts a human context: a founder looking at an adjacent market and working out what admission required. A strategy can begin with something as modest as permission to submit a bid.

“The main reason for our success is quality.”Ritu Mangla, 2010

Keeping people in the picture

By 2012, Beta Soft was describing a business that placed hundreds of professionals and worked extensively with large financial clients. Vishal’s responsibilities included operations and business strategy. The company said it met personally with the professionals it placed. For a business selling expertise, the interview was part of the machinery.

That is a revealing detail about the world Mangla helped build. The work sits between two sets of expectations. A customer needs someone who can perform an assignment. A professional needs an assignment that makes sense for their abilities. Matching a résumé to a request begins the conversation; working together gives it consequences.

A founder’s public biography naturally gives prominence to titles. The operating business is more crowded. There are consultants, hiring managers, project teams and co-founders, each holding a piece of the outcome. Mangla’s story is easiest to follow when those people remain visible. Technology services can sound abstract until one remembers that somebody has to turn up on Monday and do the work.

An aircraft hangar enters the conversation

In February 2017, Mangla published a case note about a Mobilyte remote hangar-management system. A client wanted automation designed for private aircraft hangars. The solution brought together hardware, web services and an application layer to monitor and control equipment, including temperature systems, cameras and sensors.

It is a useful antidote to the weightlessness of technology language. Here, the nouns have somewhere to stand. There is a building. There is expensive machinery inside it. Someone wants to monitor conditions and control devices from a distance. The software has a job description, and the job description comes with a roof.

That same year, Mangla was recognised as a Silicon Valley Business Journal Women of Influence honoree while leading Mobilyte. Her career was extending beyond the Beta Soft chapter. The hangar note provides a particularly specific view of the work along the way: a familiar idea from home automation adapted to a setting with its own equipment, risks and practical requirements.

The founder takes a seat in class

Mangla’s education includes MBAs from Panjab University and Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. Her LinkedIn profile dates her Kellogg studies to 2017-2019. She returned to the classroom with experience of leading businesses already behind her.

In a 2023 alumni update, she described getting energy from watching peers approach difficult problems. She also discussed working with Meta’s state and policy team on initiatives for economically disadvantaged communities, and working with WordPress VIP for federal clients. Learning and new markets appeared together in her account.

The detail about classmates is appealing because it gives education a social life. A syllabus can organise knowledge; another person can upset a comfortable assumption. For an experienced executive, being a student offers a legitimate reason to ask questions again. The title on the office door does not have to follow its owner into every discussion.

She connected her Kellogg experience to execution as well as ambition. Choosing a market is one decision. Building the ability to serve it is a sequence of decisions, usually shared with people who have to make the plan work.

InfoStride and the public-sector brief

InfoStride dates the start of its journey under Mangla to 2015. Today it identifies her as founder and CEO, leading a business that combines IT staffing with digital services for commercial and public-sector clients. The company describes experience building teams across regions and working through remote, offshore and onsite arrangements.

In a WordPress VIP webinar, Mangla introduced InfoStride as its first public-sector agency partner. The conversation brought her into discussion with WordPress VIP’s Peter Slutsky and Jodie Fiorenza about government websites, security and accessibility. These were operating requirements with implications for the people using public services.

She spoke about customers asking different questions as their requirements evolved. That gives the broad phrase “digital transformation” a more tangible meaning. A public website has to remain useful after launch. Its audience includes people with different access needs. Its operators must consider security and continuity. The attractive homepage is only the opening act; the running of the service has a longer engagement.

By 2025, Mangla was also discussing InfoStride’s work with educational institutions through E&I Cooperative Services. Her description brought software, accessibility and workforce services into the same brief, extending the institutional thread of her career.

There are signatures behind the strategy

On March 19, 2024, Mangla signed InfoStride’s Washington state IT project management contract as founder and CEO. In Texas, contract DIR-CPO-5929 began on October 24, 2025, listing her as the vendor contact. Its scope covers application work, data and analytics, assessment, and project management.

Then came another signature. On March 30, 2026, she signed InfoStride’s University of California purchasing agreement, completed the following day. These records put dates and institutions alongside the earlier ambition to serve public customers. They also show why an executive’s work cannot be captured entirely by a speaking appearance or an award photograph.

A contract is an unusually plain piece of biography. It names the organisation, identifies responsibilities and records the person authorised to act. There is little room for atmospheric lighting. Yet it can tell a reader precisely where a career has arrived: at a table where a company’s promises acquire terms.

Awards, and the people in the frame

Recognition has accompanied Mangla across several chapters. Her 2025 Women of Influence entry identifies her with InfoStride. That year she also announced a Gold Award from the TITAN Women In Business Awards, thanking her team and emphasising collaboration.

She has also occupied the other side of the awards table. A 2010 Stevie Awards judging list names her as Beta Soft’s founder; the 2019 programme lists her as InfoStride’s founder and CEO on a women-in-technology judging committee. Recipient and judge are different seats, with different responsibilities.

In her March 2026 Women’s Day message, she returned to colleagues, thanking the women at InfoStride and encouraging more room for women to lead. The emphasis belongs alongside the contracts and qualifications. This is a career built through organisations, and her public messages repeatedly bring other people into the frame.

Back at that San Jose gathering, the practical pleasure was seeing colleagues in person. Years later, the settings include classrooms, technology discussions and public institutions. The cast has grown. The working question remains pleasingly concrete: who will do the work, and how will they earn the customer’s trust?