Nature does not discriminate,” says Udai Kumar, the co-founder and the CEO of Quinnox, “rather it gives every one of its creations the opportunity and ability to differentiate themselves.” The profound lesson that Udai has drawn from life around him has helped him build a very unique company, with his other co-founders Anil Kumar and Jai Shekhawat (see siliconindia, September 03 cover story).

Quinnox, today is a global company with 1000 plus employees and presence in Americas, Europe, Asia-Pac, Japan and India. Quinnox is headquartered in Chicago with regional headquarters in London, Tokyo and Mumbai and offices in 9 other global locations, three state of the art development centers and one excellence center. With a focus on niche industry verticals and key solutions areas this company has shown sustained growth over last 8 quarters servicing key Global 100 clients.

Genesis
Quinnox—itself a Celtic charm to dispel trouble—began in 1996, when the first wave of the software boom was gaining strength. During those days of business based on cost, the company believed in quality of service as a differentiator and the business model based on right cost for quality. The right mix of talented resources ensured that the company delivered on this mantra and established a strong base for growth on three fronts - resources, revenues and reference customers.

By 2000, the company had grown to enable the three co-founders to decide to focus on two tracks—spinning off Fieldglass as a separate and independent product company, which took flight immediately, and forming a separate division to capture the growing contract programming market. But the founders after a long-debated decision came back to the original business model. And this was a wise decision as the company was very soon attracting good clients and complex projects and establishing an entity in the market.

Crunch Time
Nature believes in testing individuals and organizations in their ability to survive and evolve to the next level. The market crashing in 2001 was one such test. For Quinnox revenues began dropping and new projects were dwindling at an alarming rate.

With the experience of many economic cycles under their belt, the founders dug their heels and continued to stay the course. Quinnox was on an expansion mode and was investing on all fronts—new technologies, its resource capabilities, its customer facing team and its India operations. With investments that crossed 30 percent of revenues, and revenues still dipping, the company had to chart its future course and the duo went to seek advise from a seemingly strange source—their customers.

“We simply went and told each of our customer, ‘This is what we have, this is where we are, now tell us what we should do,’” says Kumar. “And they took time off their schedules to think for us, think with us.”

The flexibility of the company, the apparent hunger, and well-tested capabilities endeared the duo to Fortune 100 IT heads—advise poured in for the future strategy. While the dollars weren’t exactly forthcoming, the advise and encouragement from clients charged up the duo, and in spite of the constraints the two Kumars went on to hire some very senior talent for the company.

“You build a company for the long-term. We knew these relationships that we were building would help us in the long term and we wanted to be capable of sustaining that time span,” says the co-founder. “This is probably the most successful strategy we adopted—listening to the client,” recalls Kumar.

Renewed effort
The confidence levels at an all-time high, Quinnox went on to slowly get projects—small and large. “The size of the projects did not matter, what did was the immense confidence these clients and advisors had in our capabilities,” recalls Kumar. Amway, IBM, Citi and other such names were committing to partner in the business vision. From pilots, small integration projects to more complex engagements, Quinnox steadily built up steam again.

“On one hand we were successfully competing with tier one players at a multi-billion dollar enterprise with its strategy development, while on the other we were engaged with a mid-size industry leader on a multi-country multi language application rollout—a task that it did not want to trust the big guys with,” recalls the veteran. At Quinnox, continues Kumar, the drive has been to build a consistent theme of “Fit for Purpose.” Give the client a solutions that works for them, void of any hype or vagueness of “blue sky” solutions that client have tired of, and deliver results that Quinnox can stand behind in real terms. “What we have built as a company culture is the focus to recognize this need and fit a team or resources or technologies for this purpose,” says the CEO.

Quinnox today has an enviable blend of talent in the senior executive and mid-management s team—right mix of resources with industry expertise, technology specialization, process excellence and quality expertise. This leadership team is continuously driving to transform the organization to providing business, domain and thought-leadership, in addition to being an execution and implementation partner for its clients.

For every client that the team is acquiring, the leadership is pushing the team to deliver at least two innovations that would help the client in their business. Every client’s engagement for Quinnox is an opportunity to understand the client needs, the client’s customer’s need. A separate fully-funded group, under the leadership of the Chief Technology Officer has been setup with the clear mandate of applying emerging technology platforms to deliver measurable business value to Quinnox clients. “Our success in doing so is our claim to be true partners,” says Kumar, in a burst of emotional delivery.

Today the pillars of the organization are its resources spread across sales, business development and marketing, delivery, architecture, process and quality and human capital management. The firm stands tall with its SEI Level 5 capabilities and Six Sigma operations. On the client management side Kumar and his team give clients the same transparency as he seeks from him customers. “It leads to a partnership of mutual gain and no surprises. Clients find nothing wrong with that,” says Kumar. “Our client servicing approach is quite simply based on the principle of bringing to clients, all of our global strengths and capabilities with the intimacy of a local partner, fully imbibing the culture, values and interests of the client.”

A Calculated Future
In recent quarters, Quinnox has increased revenues by over 30 percent adding new clients to its folder. “Our clients want to be leaders in their business. They look to Quinnox to delivery and support application assets that help them focus on their business and realize business value.

We are not just building tools to complete projects anymore. The big shift has been to understand the client organization—internal and external, its constraints and drivers and then align our offerings to deliver business value to the end client. Be everything we can be to a few clients and not chase every dollar and every client out there.”

A good growth indeed, from Quinnox’s situation eight quarters ago. “We are not surprised,” says Kumar. “After all, our clients validated our vision.”