Amit Singh, left and Madhu Modugu are two of the three co-founders of Spectraforce Technologies, which provides information technology consulting and outsourcing services.
RALEIGH - Amit Singh, founder of Spectraforce Technologies, moved to the United States from Bombay, India, in the late 1990s to pursue his dream.
That dream was to start his own business.
In 2007, three years after Singh opened his information technology consulting and outsourcing company, the business had $7.4 million in revenue. He expects between $18 million and $20 million for 2008.
Spectraforce employs about 190 people in the United States, and its three offices in India employ 190 more.
The company's primary mission is identifying IT problems, Singh says. In the process, Spectraforce helps clients build better software systems to operate more efficiently.
Because many of the company's engineers are in India, Singh says, Spectraforce is able to provide lower cost services.
Also, he says, offices in India allow engineers to work while business executives in the United States are asleep.
Singh's target market is small and midsize businesses. One of those is moving and storage company 1-800-Pack-Rat. Jason Botts, the company's director of information technology, says his business relies heavily on customer calls and needed a better system to help service representatives ask callers the right questions and interact with the company's sales software.
"We were looking for a way to better automate the process," Botts says. Spectraforce built a customized system for the company. "They have helped tremendously," he says.
After moving to the U.S., Singh worked for several years out of an office in Cary as a consultant for Systel.
He had seen American movies filmed in New York and Los Angeles, but he found a different vibe when he landed in North Carolina, where a slower pace appealed to him.
Singh says his background in engineering and his Systel experience did not give him all of the knowledge he needed to strike out on his own. "To get perspective in a short time, you need education," he says.
He chose to enroll in the business school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill because of its emphasis on teamwork and diversity as well as its entrepreneurial focus.
While at UNC, Singh wrote the business plan for Spectraforce and entered it in a competition. It won first place. "That doubled my confidence," he says.
After graduation, Singh hooked up with other former Systel consultants Madhu Modugu and Kamalesh Nayudu to launch Spectraforce in 2004. To generate cash flow quickly, Singh says, he focused on consulting to large companies.
The strategy worked, and the business soon began generating revenue, he says. The partners financed the company themselves, Singh says, and it was profitable in its first year.
As the company grows quickly, Singh says, it faces challenges such as managing cash flow, maintaining a close relationship with clients and keeping turnover low.
Because of the booming economies in India and China, Singh says, retaining engineers in that part of the world is difficult. "Most of them have four or five job offers," he says.
To keep employees happy, Spectraforce offers everyone a share of the company and operates with a "flat" organizational structure. Any worker, he says, can call him or any other executive directly with suggestions or concerns.
Employees in India also get the chance to visit the United States, and some even transfer to the Triangle, Singh says.
"We don't want people here thinking 'thank God it's Friday,' we want them to say 'thank God it's Monday,'" he says.
Singh says he wants to take the company public, but he does not have a timeline. "If we keep growing at a healthy rate," he says, "everything else will just fall into place."
