Bootstrapping to $300 Million: Faisal Husain, CEO of Synechron (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Where is your team? Is it all in New York?

Faisal Husain: We started out of New Jersey. We had a development center in India from day one, because almost all of our clients were interested in leveraging the global delivery model to manage the cost in these projects.

To your question about what things we did strategically, we invested in professional sales. We also made a strategic decision not to raise money and to keep the company completely internally owned, and make long-term decisions rather than short-term. The biggest decision we made was to really stay focused on the industry and continue to build our corporate resume in this industry. There have been times where we had been tempted out of that.

I would say that the true test for the company was in the 2007 to 2011 time frame when the financial crisis happened. As a company that focuses heavily on financial services, we were at great risk. Fortunately, even though we did say we are financial services-focused, we were a little bit diversified within financial services. One-third of our business is in insurance, one-third is in mortgage banking, and a third is in wholesale banking. We were able to pivot from one to the other as things were happening.

We were very quick on our feet. We were quick to make decisions and we were also lucky. We were lucky that Lehman Brothers was not a client. We were lucky that Sterns was not a client. Apart from that, we pivoted pretty quickly as things were happening in the market.

Sramana Mitra: What kind of revenue level were you at during the financial crisis?

Faisal Husain: In 2009, we reached the $100 million mark. During the worst period of the recession, which was during 2008 to 2009, we grew 25%. From 2009 to 2010, again on a net basis, we grew 60%. Net basis means we did lose revenue, but we more than made up for it in other areas.

Sramana Mitra: What was the next period? Tell me more about what happened after the financial crisis. Were you flat for a while?

Faisal Husain: We haven’t been flat.

Sramana Mitra: That’s great.

Faisal Husain: We have never lost revenue. Thankfully, we’ve always had steady growth. As of today, we are very close to a $300 million run-rate. Our compounded annual growth rate has been between 20% and 30%. Right now, we are at 25%. We are doing well. We are happy. We have big decisions at the same time.

Sramana Mitra: You are still completely self-financed?

Faisal Husain: Yes.

This segment is part 4 in the series : Bootstrapping to $300 Million: Faisal Husain, CEO of Synechron
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