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| Press Coverage Home > Press Coverage |
Trio of founders has talent to burst IT company forward
By Naomi Grossman
NATICK, Mass. - Two years ago, TalentBurst Inc. co-founders Brad Talwar, Deep Deshpande and Baljit Gill were all working for the same large software management company - they all wanted out.
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| Talwar |
According to Talwar, the impetus to start the company was fairly simple. "We wanted to build a company that perfected the mistakes in the industry," he said.
Trouble areas that TalentBurst initially focused on included employee management, client management and project deliverables.
The co-founders believed they could provide services better and cheaper because of their offshore/onshore approach and the lower overhead of a smaller firm.
"We are not overpriced consultants," said Talwar. "We don't have the high overhead and we don't have the profit requirements of Wall Street firms."
According to him, TalentBurst is half the price of their larger competitors such as IBM, Accenture, Webpro International and Infosys Technologies Ltd.
"Our mission is good value," he said. "We are essentially the Honda Accord of consulting."
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| Gill |
Companies don't have the bandwidth necessary in house to execute these functions, said Talwar.
TalentBurst currently has 12 customers in the United States including The Home Depot, Continental Airlines Inc., Best Buy, Pfizer Inc. and Aventis. The company also has one project in India.
Talwar said he is aware of the touchy matter of developing potential U.S. jobs overseas. "Taking U.S. jobs away is a sensitive issue," he said. "We go to a client and we pitch to them about using the offshore option, but we don't push our clients."
TalentBurst's current U.S. expansion was prompted by the number of larger clients it has in both cities. Talwar said that he anticipates further growth for TalentBurst, aiming to have nearly 80 employees by the end of 2005 and possible additional locations in New York and Los Angeles.
"It depends on where the client base is," he said. "Being small and nimble allows us to do that."
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| Deshpande |
Talwar attributed the success of the company to the combined experience of its co-founders.
While only 29, Talwar has been working in the software industry since he came to the United States from Lucknow in 1996 for a job with a software-management company. His cousin, Gill, came to the United States in 1999 from New Delhi to work for the same company. His high school friend, Deshpande, came in 1994 from New Delhi for an undergraduate degree at Muskingum College in New Concord, Ohio.
In 1999, Desphande joined Talwar and Gill.
Talwar is currently TalentBurst's vice president of business development; Deshpande is the vice president of operations; and Gill is the vice president of resourcing.
The company has no chief executive officer and Talwar is quick to emphasize that the three men function collectively as an office of the president.
"We make collective decisions," said Talwar, who added that both the founders of Google and of Yahoo structured their companies in the same way.
"One of us will eventually emerge as the CEO or possibly we'll hire a professional to take us to the next level," he said. "For now, three brains are greater than one."
To get to that next level, Tarwal said TalentBurst would consider using a bank's line of credit.
The company is not interested in outside investors, he added, but would not ruling anything out down the line.
"In five years we could be primed for an acquisition," he said. "We need to be in the industry at least five years. Anything else is a flash in the pan."