Corrections or additions?
This article by Barbara Fox was prepared for the June 4, 2003 edition of U.S. 1 Newspaper. All rights reserved.
On the Move: Offshore IT — Not So Bad for U.S.
If you are worried that all the information technology
work is going to migrate to India, don’t worry, says Mahesh Yadav,
founder of Optima Global Solutions. “That is not possible. But
a significant portion is going to go — and that’s capitalism.”
Yadav insists that the decision to hire offshore programmers is not
merely based on cost, though cost is the major factor. “Just as
with manufacturing, offshore programming will become a way of life
— not for everybody, but a very attractive option for any project.”
Still, cost is the major factor. “The companies that are going
to get punished by Wall Street have no choice but to use cost effective
measures.”
What Yadav wants American companies to realize is that from 50 to
80 percent of any project can be accomplished at bargain rates. “The
design phase, implementation, and testing, they must be done onsite.
Software development, programming, and maintenance can be done offshore.
We are sending only up to 50 percent offshore.”
His full service IT staffing and solutions company, Optima Global
Solutions, has moved from Coburn Road in Pennington to Quakerbridge
Road and has a new phone and fax. It offers onsite, off-site, and
offshore software development, enterprise application integration,
web services, and workflow process management. Yadav says his financial
and pharmaceutical clients are medium to large businesses on the Fortune
500 list. “We crossed our million dollar mark in the first year,
last year. This year we are already at $3.5 million. We are growing
at a very decent rate.”
Yadav hopes to tap offshore savings for his clients with a new alliance
with a company named MphasiS, with has offices in Mumbai and Bangalore,
among others. More than one-fourth of its 4,000 employees are doing
IT.
Yadav grew up in Mumbai, where his father was an attorney, and majored
in mechanical engineering at the Sardar Patel College of Engineering,
Bombay University, Class of 1989. He says that because he was responsible
for running the household, including educating his two sisters and
his youngest brother and buying a house for his parents, he turned
to sales as the most lucrative career. He and his wife, whom he met
at Hexaware in Bombay, have a four-year-old daughter and a one-year
son.
“I was hired into a software export company and came to the USA
on a work permit in 1993 to set up U.S. operations of an Indian company,
Hexaware, in Boston.” He was assistant vice president in 1996
when he left Hexaware to join NovaSoft. As chief operating officer
he ran U.S. operations while the owner, Neil Bhaskar, was trying to
take the company public. Bhaskar gave him a Mercedes Benz sedan and
subsequently made a splash by giving away eight more Mercedes Benz
sedans to outstanding performers (U.S. 1, May 19, 1999). “People
like to work for companies that are going places and having fun,”
Bhaskar said then. “Part of our intellectual capital branding
is for people to hear that `you are from that company that gives out
Mercedes.’”
But the IPO efforts came too late “We missed the boat for market
conditions, and he had spent a lot of money hiring a lot of people,
and we ended up with a huge overhead,” says Yadav. Almost two
years ago he left NovaSoft to start his own company.
“I wanted the freedom of running a company the way I could grow
it, so I came to NovaSoft. I really enjoyed generating business and
growing the company and being sure a good team was in place. But things
changed as the company grew, and I decided I needed a little more
freedom,” says Yadav. The timing was off for his new company just
as it been for NovaSoft when it missed the IPO window. Optima started
in August, 2001. “Of course I did not anticipate 9/11. That year
was a clean wash as far as business goes. Now we are 25 people strong
— some are subcontractors — and we have people all over the
country.” There are four employees on Quakerbridge Road and one
in New York City.
Of the employees, 40 to 50 percent are American nationals, and all
the workers are either a green card holders or U.S. citizens. “We
have not brought one person from overseas. There is no need,”
says Yadav. “Our business has grown purely based on relationships.
One of my biggest financial clients has a lot of experience offshore.
They are trusting us and are not getting into the nitty gritty of
any jobs.”
Outsourcing programming to an offshore location began 15 or 20 or
more years ago, he says. “All the companies were doing it, but
not with so much aggression. Because of the economy, they are doing
it more, and now it has matured. The offshore vendors are able to
come up with the needs of the big financial houses.”
Optima Global Solutions Inc., 3705 QuakerbridgeRoad, Suite 202, Hamilton 08619. Mahesh Yadav, founder CEO. 609-586-8811;fax, 609-586-8825.Top Of PageExpansions: CaliperAfter 22 years at 741 Mount Lucas Road, Caliper expandedfrom 22,000 square feet to 40,000 square feet in the 500 series atthe Carnegie Center. Simultaneously it closed an office at 457 NorthHarrison Street. The move took place June 2. Phone, fax, and postoffice box mailing address remain the same. “It was either finda third location or move to a larger space,” says Patrick Sweeney,spokesperson. The company has about 165 employees.Herb Greenberg started the company — which does psychologicaltesting, team building, training, and HR consulting — in Manhattanin 1961. He moved it to Research Park in 1970, when it 40 employess,and had a building constructed on Mount Lucas in 1980.”It’s difficult to leave a place where we have been for a longtime,” says Sweeney, “but there is the excitement that comesfrom going to someplace gorgeous.”Caliper, 506 Carnegie, Suite 300, Box 2050, Princeton08543-2050. Herbert M. Greenberg, CEO. 609-924-3800; fax, 609-683-8560.Www.caliperonline.comTop Of PageExpansions: TaihoIn March Masayuki Kobayashi has moved his pharmaceuticalbusiness from shared space at 100 Overlook to more than 8,000 squarefeet at the Carnegie Center. It has a staff of seven people and plansto add several more this year.Kobayashi opened the U.S. office in Manhattan in 1997. The son ofa pharmaceutical executive, he went to Gakushuin University in Tokyo,and worked at the Japanese bank in New York before joining this pharmaceuticalfirm eight years ago. He and his wife and their three young children,moved to West Windsor (U.S. 1, December 4, 2002).Based in Tokyo, Taiho is a Japanese pharmaceutical company, in thefamily of Otsuka companies, which manufactures and develops therapiesfor oncology, urology, and immunology. It is bringing a drug to theUnited States that has been used for three years in Japan for advancedgastric cancer and for head and neck cancer. It is in Phase 1 clinicaltrials in the United States for advanced gastric cancer.”We are aggressively pursuing our clinical trials and will moveinto Phase 2 later on this year. We are on schedule,” says StevenHite, vice president of operations.Taiho Pharma U.S.A. Inc., 210 Carnegie Center,Princeton 08540. Masayuki Kobayashi, president. 609-750-5300. fax,609-750-7450. Home page: www.taiho.co.jpTop Of PageLeaving TownLanier Worldwide Inc., 104 Interchange Plaza, Cranbury.The office products company has moved from 104 Interchange Plaza atExit 8A to Route 1 South in Iselin. The new phone is 732-636-9136.Top Of PageManagement MovesETS Chauncey Conference Center, Rosedale Road,Box 6652, Princeton 08541-6652. Mary Janelle, managing director. 609-921-3600;fax, 609-683-4958. Www.chaunceymeetings.comEducational Testing Center has chosen Aramark Harrison Lodging toreplace the Marenzana Group as the operator of the Chauncey ConferenceCenter. Marenzana, a Connecticut-based company, has managed the centersince it was spun off from ETS in 1994.As the lowest bidder, Aramark has a three-year contract that startsJune 1. Except for several management positions, 60 current employeeswill keep their jobs. The conference center is run partly for profit,has a capacity of 200 guests, and is available to the public for educationaland research-related conferences. Located on 370 acres, the centerwas built in 1973. It has 22 meeting rooms plus golf, swimming andtennis. Aramark manages more than 50 conference centers nationwide.Orchid BioSciences Inc. (ORCH), 4390 Route 1 North,Princeton 08543. George Poste, chairman. 609-750-2200; fax, 609-750-6400.Home page: www.orchid.comOn Monday, June 2, Paul J. Kelly MD, age 43, succeeded Dale Pfostas CEO of Orchid BioSciences Inc. Pfost resigned last December. Kellyis an Australian native who went to medical school at the Universityof New South Wales. A research physician specializing in endocrinology,he is known for co-founding Gemini Genomics, a leading clinical genomicscompany that discovers and commercializes novel gene-based targets.Gemini collected data from a various human population groups and appliedbioinformatics tools to accelerate gene and target identificationand drug discovery. Kelly positioned Gemini for the largest biotechIPO in the U.K. and in 2001 he helped the company merge with Sequenom.Kelly also helped found Nanovis LLC, a materials science company;AgaMatrix Inc., a medical devices firm; and most recently served asCEO of OmniViz Inc., which provides data analysis and visualizationsoftware tools to the life sciences, chemical, and healthcare industries.Orchid has services and products for forensic and paternity DNA testing,pharmacogentics-based personalized healthcare, and public health genotypingservices.Top Of PageStock NewsXechem Inc./Xechem International Inc. (XKEM), 100Jersey Avenue, Building B, Suite 310, New Brunswick 08901-3279. RameshC. Pandey, CEO. 732-247-3300; fax, 732-247-4090. E-mail: xechem@erols.comHome page: www.xechem.comXechem International’s stock symbol changed from ZKEM to XKEM aftera one-for-3,000 stock split. It is traded on the over the counterbulletin board at about 23 cents. The company works on generic andproprietary drugs from natural sources, including ginseng and melatoninproducts, and has an alternative medicine company, Xetapharm. It focuseson anticancer and antiviral compounds, including HIVcompounds.Xechem has successfully isolated and received a process patent onpaclitaxel (the product trademarked by Bristol-Myers Squibb as “Taxolr,”),that can treat ovarian, breast, small cell lung cancers, and AIDSrelated Kaposi sarcomas.Top Of PageContracts AwardedGeneProt, the industrial-scale proteomics company that had hoped totake an entire building at the Technology Center of New Jersey, hassome good news. It licensed its first protein to its first partner,Novartis Pharma AG in Basel, Switzerland. Financial terms were notdisclosed.”We look forward to further licenses in due course coming outof our collaboration with Novartis and from others,” says BertrandDamour, CEO of the GeneProt, based in Geneva, Switzerland.”This protein is one of more than 20 proteins and polypeptidesthat are being studied at Novartis and elsewhere. Our chemical synthesisapproach enables us to rapidly provide samples in the quantities andpurity required for pre-clinical studies,” says Keith Rose, GeneProt’sCSO (www.geneprot.com).Top Of PageMilestonesBarbara R. Plumley Brophy, 60, on May 22. She was an ERregistrar at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital at Hamilton.Krystyna Krawczyk Szewczyk, 50, on May 25. She was a supervisorEPV Company.Robert Rock, 72, on May 31. He was a construction managementengineer at Rutgers.Enoch J. Durbin, 80, on May 27. He was a retired PrincetonUniversity professor and inventor whose patents included a tennisracket design.Next StoryCorrections or additions?This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
