Two friends Kalyan Reddy and Raj Kosaraju from different and yet modest backgrounds have one thing in common- brains that think alike. And the result was- Maxil Technology Solutions. Based in Chicago, the epicenter of the U.S. financial market where major banks, financial institutions and insurance companies are headquartered, Maxil, in a short span, has become eye candy of customers for technology solutions and services with emphasis on data warehousing, technology services and solutions.

They started the company with $5000 borrowed from friends and acquaintances and are today steering towards an $11 million company- $5 million from the U.S. and $6 million from around the world. An impressive figure for a company that opened doors right in the middle of theY2K scare in 1999.

Small Beginnings
Reddy and Kosaraju met at Texas A&M University. As their friendship grew so did their entrepreneurial spirit. While Reddy pursued an MS in Computer Science from Texas A&M University, Kosaraju was pursuing an MBA after completing his MS in Information Systems & International Management from the Universidad Internacional De Las Americas in Costa Rica.

When an opportunity to work at Oracle came by, Reddy in spite of the entrepreneurial yearnings decided to take up the job as a tech lead to gain experience. Two years down the lane Reddy and Kosaraju were still contemplating with their achievements; a motivational and entrepreneurial drive to start a company and be their own boss flowered and thus the journey towards starting Maxil began. Starting the business was easy, as the co-founders knew since inception what they wanted to do with the company, says Kosaraju. “Because Kalyan came fresh from Oracle and I had my own share of experience, we knew what we wanted to do. We picked the right ecosystem and the right people,” Kosaraju says.

Starting a ‘me-too’ company wasn’t their aim and hence they worked to be different from others in many aspects. At the height of the Y2K problem when top IT consulting companies went all-out concentrating on Y2K, Reddy and Kosaraju started Maxil as a Knowledge Process Management and Domain Resource Augmentation firm.

With no customer, the initial days weren’t so good for the company. But a break through came from NASDAQ. Since the company initially focused on staff augmentation and provided a domain resource specialist for NASDAQ, that worked wonders for the company. The said specialist proved his mettle and NASDAQ wanted more people from the company. As one says money makes more money, the NASDAQ served as the company’s referral and the good word spread, getting the company more clients.

The Momentum
As their customer base grew, the company gained insight into the working of the industry and built accordingly. Today Maxil is focused on industry solutions in five core areas; Data Warehousing, Quality Assurance, Java, Applications, and Networking.

Maxilworks on three data warehousing platforms such as Informatica, Business object, Microstrategy, Brio, Abinitio and Essbase.

“These five areas, along with our staffing group and offshore delivery capabilities provide our clients a wide array of applications, including real-time, online and embedded systems, process control, transaction and image processing, data communications, networking, parallel architectures, e-commerce technologies and database management,” says Reddy.

Maxil’s competitive edge comes from combining technology competencies with deep understanding of verticals, straddling a range of sectors from banking and insurance, power, mining and telecom, financial services to education. Maxil’s high quality, high value IT solutions have helped reshape businesses and delivered measurable results to our customers.
It wasn’t until 2002 when the IT industry was still in a slump that the company decided to go global. They started their global center in U.K. and later expanded to Singapore, Malaysia and India. They are now hoping to expand in Latin America with outside investment. Despite going through a severe crisis in initial stages-Y2K, IT slump along with 9/11, the company today is totally bootstrapped and debt free.

It was during this period that the founders decided to target the Small Medium Enterprises with revenues below $50 million. The company built portals for potential customers for free and expanded their services once their customers got on board.

Maxil was recently ranked in the 148th position by the Deloitte Technology Fast 500, a ranking of the 500 fastest growing IT companies in the U.S. Deloitte rankings are based on percentage revenue growth during the last past five years. Maxil grew 1353 percent during this period.

When the growth has been so phenomenal since its inception, Maxil has the potential to grow better over the next six years. Let the young Turks take control.