It’s not often that a company gets to be a metaphor for its own success. But Connectiva Systems really is growing while the economy is shrinking, and it has recovered $500 million in lost revenue for clients, increasing their margins while their revenue is shrinking.

Connectiva Systems is a revenue chain management software company, whose solutions enable telecom operators improve their business performance, productivity, and profitability. Their solutions find lost revenue that is owed but has not been paid, due to either fraud, or falling through the ether’s cracks. In this climate, where phone companies are hard-pressed to find new revenue streams, it is not just that Connectiva clients don’t have to lay off employees in order to meet stockholder expectations, but in some cases they have passed some of their significant savings onto their phone customers.

Avi Basu, CEO of Connectiva, runs his own business like an enterprising watchdog. He doesn’t waste anything, doesn’t believe in bloated business models, and walks his talk. By running a purposefully modest office culture, he created the lean-times approach before the recession. Now that times are bad, Basu and his team have the habits that help not only to survive, but thrive. Basu says, “We had to learn how to survive in bad times. We had no options as capital, both human and financial, was non-existent. We just had to buckle down, figure out how to weather the storm and make every possible move so that we come out strong at the end of a downturn.” Since then Connectiva has grown exponentially and is now doing business in every continent across the globe.

But Basu isn’t miserly when it comes to what counts. He invests in the cream of the crop human resources and infuses all the capital it takes for the technological innovation that gives him the competitive edge. His motto is to have the finest intellectual property and solutions that work for less capital outlay than his competitors, and with a better ROI.

He calls it American technological ingenuity and an Indian business model. Whatever he calls it, it’s working. Under Basu’s leadership, Connectiva has transformed itself from an early stage product company into a leading provider of revenue chain management solutions. Basu has led Connectiva by securing strategic sources of capital, closing major customer acquisitions, and establishing key global alliances, all of which have driven 100 percent growth annually for the past four years.