High-growth ProS

High-growth ProS

COVER STORY by Mark Gordon | Managing Editor

Reflecting on his recent triumphs, Ajit Nair is a contradiction of emotions. He is proud, yet humble, jovial but intense. Mostly, though, he is in the middle: Levelheaded and even-keeled.

From being the youngest person - by about 15 years - to be enshrined in his alma mater's business hall of fame, to the phenomenal growth at his 2-year-old Tampa-based technology start-up to making something of himself after a sparse upbringing in Bombay, India, Nair talks as if all of it was supposed to turn out this way.

Take how he owned a multimillion-dollar systems integration firm by the time he was 27, then sold it for a tidy profit before turning 35. "I had been there, done that," he says, shrugging. Or how he mastered the engineering and computer technology field after growing up in India 20 years ago, a childhood he understates slightly by saying only that it was "relatively poor" at the time. "In India," Nair says, shrugging again, "you either go to medical school or engineering school."

Now 37, Nair's latest accomplishment is being the chief executive officer of one of the fastest-growing technology start-up companies in Florida, PRO V International. The Tampa-based firm hooks up computer systems and works on other computer-related projects for a variety of companies, mostly in the health care, retail and manufacturing industries. After launching toward the end of 2003 and earning $300,000 in revenue for the year, the company shot up to $5 million in 2004 and $10 million in 2005. Nair expects revenues to grow to $16 million in 2006. PRO V has gone from a few employees in the beginning to roughly 200, with plans to grow to as many as 300 by the end of the year.

The growth was noticed by IT Florida, a Tallahassee-based non-profit advocacy group for technology firms statewide. It named PRO V its 2005 High Growth Company of the Year.

For the award, IT Florida said it looks for companies with some combination of using technical innovation, scale of growth and how it responds to changes in the marketplace. Finalists included Boca Raton-based Campus Management Corp., which markets software for colleges and schools, and Wholesale Carrier Services, a Coral Springs-based telecom firm that ranked 233rd nationwide in Inc. magazine's 2005 list of fastest growing private companies, with a three-year average annual sales growth of 500%.

PRO V was selected because of its combination of growth factors, including revenues and hiring Florida-based employees from the West Coast and India. In addition to growth, PRO V carries an impressive client list, peppered with names like the Gap, Williams-Sonoma and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida.

"There are people who look at us and say, not bad for a 2-year-old firm," Nair said recently from his Tampa office perched over the Tampa Bay. "I say I want to do more."

Crawl, walk and run

There is no magic potion for growing as quickly as PRO V has. In interviews with several past and present clients, the one constant that keeps coming up is Nair. His ability to have laser-like focus on the problem and get it turned around quickly is what keeps customers coming back, several clients say.

"He has been able to focus the right talent on the right problem," says Dennis Johnson, who hired PRO V to work on integration issues for GE Medical Systems a few years ago. "And he has a personal touch. You can count on Ajit."

Al Amador says Nair and PRO V came through recently for his business infrastructure department at Kaiser Permanente, the California-based medical and health information firm. His staff was in a tight spot with a problem on a complicated Web-based project, and they needed a team of analysts, fast. PRO V responded quickly, Amador says, which bigger competitors, such as IBM, might not have been able to do.

"There are some national integration firms 100 times the size of PRO V that can't compete with them," Amador says. He too, cites access to Nair as a reason for continuously choosing PRO V for projects.

For Nair, it's a down-and-dirty approach. Although he oversees the company as the chief executive and therefore must be the chief planner, he likes to make sure problems are not just discussed but solved.

"There are a lot of CEOs who are visionaries," he says, "but to me, implementation is more important than being a visionary."

Nair says he always thinks long-term with prospective clients. He says people in his field run into problems when they try to be all things to all people, or when they try to do too much too fast and "crawl, walk and run" at the same time. "You want to run," he says, "but you start by crawling."

At PRO V, the crawl starts with using technology and software to bring departments together, usually in companies not well-versed or experienced in new technology, such as manufacturing operations, a bread-and-butter client for Nair.

"There is enough confusion in a large company," Nair says, drawing a few circles to represent different departments a manufacturer might have, such as distribution, sales and logistics, so he can display how PRO V works. He connects each part of the circle: "We are able to integrate departments of an entire company so it can function smoothly."

Long-term growth

Nair developed the passion for all things computers as a boy growing up in India. At 22, after graduating from Bombay University, he came to America, leaving all of his friends and family behind. He honed his computer and business skills as a graduate student at Utah State University. He earned an MBA there in 1994, and a few years ago he was honored at the school for his business success.

After graduate school, he worked near Yellowstone Park for a short time and then moved to Ann Arbor, Mich., where he worked in marketing for three years. In 1998, Nair moved back to the West Coast. He founded Aces International in San Jose, Calif., a firm that did the same type of integrations work that PRO V does now.

Aces grew quickly to have annual revenues of about $20 million; it was named a top 100 emerging company by Computer World Magazine. Nair sold it in 2003, declining to say for how much.

With Aces, Nair had clients in Florida, and he thought the Tampa market lacked the type of integrations firm he could provide. So using mostly his own money, Nair launched PRO V in late 2003. The firm has kept its Tampa headquarters while expanding internationally, to countries including India, Germany and Canada. Nair travels frequently, but Tampa remains his home.

Nair says one of his biggest challenges - not unlike many other successful start-ups - is to sustain the growth, both in revenue and employee numbers, without losing the personal touches that made him successful in the first place.

Nair says he plans to grow from within, not by acquisitions. He hopes to pick up clients in other international areas, such as London. He also hopes to take the company public within five years, he says.

CEO INSIGHT

FAST COMPANY

Ajit Nair, CEO of PRO V International, IT Florida's High Growth Company of 2005, offers some quick tips for quick growth:

Be aggressive: Have a specific sales target and set an agenda to reach it quickly.

Under promise/Over deliver: Be responsive to every need the client has.

Think long-term: While this might sound as the opposite for growing fast, thinking five or 10 years ahead, Nair says, is the only way to have legitimate growth, fast or not.