Now they're pursuing the Indian dream
ByBARRY SHLACHTER2004
BANGALORE, India -- "My wife said I was going to suffer, my father said I was nuts."
Srikanth Natarajan did what many middle-class Indians would have considered unthinkable in the not-too-distant past.
In 1998, he turned down a $65,000-a-year job in Plano, Texas, with a U.S. corporation, Sterling Software, so that one day he could build his own company.
As part of his plan, he joined a well-regarded Bangalore software firm -- "to learn how to run an Indian company."
In 2000, with $600 for a table, a telephone line and a cellphone, he launched eSpark Infotech, a company that creates software that runs digital cameras, cellphones and other electronic items. It has grown from three workers to 45, and sales reached $500,000 for the 12 months ending in March 2004.
The 37-year-old Natarajan is part of India's new generation of technically trained entrepreneurs who confidently pass up careers in the United States and Western Europe to work at local startups or create their own.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of such firms are being launched on kitchen tables or in back rooms of tiny apartments in places like Bangalore, Mumbai and Hyderabad. For example, Mumbai-based Mastek, a software design company that worked on London's new traffic-control system, began in a living room. Its only link to the outside world was a phone at a jewelry shop down the street. Today Mastek's stock is worth about $880 million.
Natarajan had been offered the North Texas job to stay with his software unit, which had been sold to Sterling by Texas Instruments. From 1990 to 1998, he had worked for TI, which sent him on numerous business trips to North America, Asia and Europe.
"I experienced life in the United States, and I wanted to avoid losing my cultural identity. I knew I could live well in Bangalore," he said.
But it hasn't been all smooth sailing with eSpark.
"After a few rough rides, I had second thoughts, but they passed," he said.
Late last year, it dawned on Natarajan that eSpark needed a line of credit to meet the rent and payroll in lean times. An Indian bank extended him a $58,000 credit line that sees it through cash-flow crunches.
His former employer, TI, has outsourced work to eSpark, as have German and Norwegian companies. The company's software was used in a hand-held computer called the Simputer, which was designed and manufactured in India.
Natarajan reckons profits on the $500,000 in sales this past financial year were 30 percent, which he plowed back into the closely held corporation.
His company operates out of a two-story house in what was once a residential area but is fast being taken over by startups with lofty ambitions but modest means.
"I turned down the 'American dream,' " Natarajan recalled recently. "But I still have a dream. I want my own Gulfstream [executive jet]. It'll still take me 10 years to get it, but I'll get it."
BANGALORE, India -- "My wife said I was going to suffer, my father said I was nuts."
Srikanth Natarajan did what many middle-class Indians would have considered unthinkable in the not-too-distant past.
In 1998, he turned down a $65,000-a-year job in Plano, Texas, with a U.S. corporation, Sterling Software, so that one day he could build his own company.
As part of his plan, he joined a well-regarded Bangalore software firm -- "to learn how to run an Indian company."
In 2000, with $600 for a table, a telephone line and a cellphone, he launched eSpark Infotech, a company that creates software that runs digital cameras, cellphones and other electronic items. It has grown from three workers to 45, and sales reached $500,000 for the 12 months ending in March 2004.
The 37-year-old Natarajan is part of India's new generation of technically trained entrepreneurs who confidently pass up careers in the United States and Western Europe to work at local startups or create their own.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of such firms are being launched on kitchen tables or in back rooms of tiny apartments in places like Bangalore, Mumbai and Hyderabad. For example, Mumbai-based Mastek, a software design company that worked on London's new traffic-control system, began in a living room. Its only link to the outside world was a phone at a jewelry shop down the street. Today Mastek's stock is worth about $880 million.
Natarajan had been offered the North Texas job to stay with his software unit, which had been sold to Sterling by Texas Instruments. From 1990 to 1998, he had worked for TI, which sent him on numerous business trips to North America, Asia and Europe.
"I experienced life in the United States, and I wanted to avoid losing my cultural identity. I knew I could live well in Bangalore," he said.
But it hasn't been all smooth sailing with eSpark.
"After a few rough rides, I had second thoughts, but they passed," he said.
Late last year, it dawned on Natarajan that eSpark needed a line of credit to meet the rent and payroll in lean times. An Indian bank extended him a $58,000 credit line that sees it through cash-flow crunches.
His former employer, TI, has outsourced work to eSpark, as have German and Norwegian companies. The company's software was used in a hand-held computer called the Simputer, which was designed and manufactured in India.
Natarajan reckons profits on the $500,000 in sales this past financial year were 30 percent, which he plowed back into the closely held corporation.
His company operates out of a two-story house in what was once a residential area but is fast being taken over by startups with lofty ambitions but modest means.
"I turned down the 'American dream,' " Natarajan recalled recently. "But I still have a dream. I want my own Gulfstream [executive jet]. It'll still take me 10 years to get it, but I'll get it."