With a postdoctoral degree in biochemistry, multiple publications in several academic journals to her credit and a teaching position at SUNY Buffalo, Devi Bheemappa has achieved nearly everything that a researcher can wish for. However, if you’re looking for her in a classroom, you won’t find her. Bheemappa is the CEO of DeCopier Technologies, a Massachusetts company that has developed a patented new technology that removes toner from laser printed and photocopied papers and makes them reusable.

Classroom to Boardroom

“I guess I’m a little impatient by nature,” explains Bheemappa. “Much as I loved being a researcher, I could not be happy with the slow pace of work that scientific research involves. You sometimes have to wait for years before you see the fruit of your labor.” Not someone to sit around and let things pass, Bheemappa decided to go for a career change. She earned her MBA in marketing from the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and has not looked back since.

“I had always been interested in working for a cutting-edge technology company, not just another dot-com,” says Bheemappa, explaining why she decided to join DeCopier. DeCopier fitted the bill in every respect. For one thing, the DeCopier technology, being less understood by the market, challenged Bheemappa in a way few dot-com ideas would have. Secondly, unlike most dot-coms, it had a tangible product and many barriers to market entry. Third, the technology could save millions of trees. And finally, the cost-benefit proposition of the technology made sense to her, which — being the businesswoman that she is — was the most important consideration to her.

Conversely, Bheemappa was ideal for DeCopier. She had already worked for several technology companies in sales and marketing positions, including Canon, Fujitsu and Global Data Corp. She had also co-founded a dot-com, TrueAdvantage.com, in 1998, which provides private-labeled sales leads and RFP solutions for the B2B marketplaces, portals and communities that match buyers and sellers cost effectively. She sold the company for $15 million to Dbusiness.com in June 2000, when she found that the market was becoming “fuzzy,” and her company needed a partner with an established presence. She was definitely the person that DeCopier founder Dr. Sushil Bhatia was looking for to take his idea to the market place successfully.