 Himanshu Bhatia
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ST. LOUIS, Mo. - Himanshu Bhatia started out her career as an architect in India. And even though that is as far as she got in her initial vocation, she has certainly designed and crafted quite a resume as CEO of IT-services company Rose International.
The St. Louis-based company currently has 500 employees at three offices in Missouri, two in California, one in Illinois and one in India.
Customers include Anheuser-Busch Co. Inc., PepsiCo Inc., Toyota Motor Corp., the United States Air Force, Army, Navy and Department of Agriculture, the state of Illinois and the state of Missouri.
Rose's revenues run about $35 million a year.
The company and Bhatia have been decorated by a number of accolades. Rose has been named to the St. Louis Regional Technology Top/Fast-50 for five consecutive years, Working Woman magazine's top-500 businesses for two straight years and listed number 21 on Inc. magazine's top-500 fasting-growing businesses in 2001. Bhatia was recently given the U.S. Small Business Administration's 2003 National Entrepreneurial Success Award. In 2001, the SBA named her Missouri's small-business person of the year. In 2000, Asian Enterprise Magazine declared her "Asian Entrepreneur of the Year" for the high-tech industry.
Despite her early architecture aspirations - Bhatia has a bachelor's degree from the School of Planning and Architecture in New Delhi and held several architecture-related jobs in India - Bhatia shifted to the technology field when she came to the United States in 1987.
She attended the University of Missouri and graduated with a master's degree in management information systems in 1989.
Bhatia said that she left architecture behind because she was concerned about the difficulties of finding success in the architecture field in the United States.
"I have no regrets," she said about doing so.
After getting out of the University of Missouri, Bhatia put her degree in management information systems to work with The Boeing Co., Electronic Data Systems and Edward Jones.
When Bhatia and her husband, Gulab, began Rose in 1993 it was run as a part-time consulting business operated mostly by Bhatia, who was still working full-time at Edward Jones. Gulab was working as a software consultant on several government contracts.
Gulab, whom Bhatia met in Delhi in 1987, has a background in research and development specializing in software and algorithm development for the display of image data in machine vision and 3-D image processing. He has served as managing director of the New Delhi-based Beebcon Engineering Pvt. Ltd., and has a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in electrical engineering.
After two years, Bhatia left Edward Jones and focused on Rose fulltime. She admitted the move was a risk, but one that needed to be taken.
"I saw a need for consulting services. I thought there was much to be done in terms of providing such services," she said. "In 1995, it was now or never."
According to Bhatia, the early years gave her experience to draw on that became a necessity as the company grew and she evolved into filling more of a chief executive role.
She said she wore "a lot of hats" in the beginning - selling, marketing, organizing the business and even installing software for customers.
"It was very challenging and exciting," she added.
Bhatia said she even went as far as to print up different business cards for the different functions she fulfilled at Rose. "It is a little embarrassing to walk in the door of a company and hand a card that says CEO to an administrative assistant."
But Bhatia wouldn't have to be embarrassed for long. And she wouldn't have to walk through doors as a saleswoman for too long either because Rose began to take off and its number of employees continued to grow. Gulab also joined the company full-time as president, a position he still holds.
According to Bhatia, Rose's ability to obtain several government contracts in the early years acted as a catalyst for company growth.
In fact, government work has been a Rose staple throughout the company's existence. Today 45 percent of its work comes from federal or state contracts. For example, Rose has 13 different federal contracts and is a Department of Defense "Prime Contractor."
Bhatia said that many companies avoid selling their wares or services to the government because of the slow and long process it takes to get a contract approved. She added that, even though commercial business was booming during the mid 1990s, Rose continued to pursue government work because of the stability of such contracts.
When the tech bust came about, this strategy paid off.
Bhatia said when the economy soured Rose's plush portfolio of government work kept the company stable. The growing recession, she added, is also what caused Rose to expand into the different consulting areas that it features today. These include -- Web design, e-commerce strategy, network security, electronic management of vendors, invoicing and human resources or outsourcing to foreign countries.
In addition to government contracts, Bhatia credits Rose's success to developing a well-known name in the St. Louis market and using local contacts to spread business across the country.
Bhatia has promoted Rose through her involvement in non-profit organizations. She is a mentor for Women in Technology International, serves on the University of Missouri's MIS Advisory Board and is part of the school's MIS Mentoring Program, is a SBA Coach helping small business owners and served on President Clinton's Initiative on Race.
"I think all these experiences are very enriching for me and it is good for the company as well," she said. "I feel we owe back to local organizations who provided (Rose with) opportunity."
Bhatia also said she believes some of Rose's success can be attributed to the company's close-knit community.
"A lot of the people from the very beginning are still here," she said.
"The senior leaders are all from inside," she added. "I think it is good that they know the history, the attitude and the work ethic."
One such individual is Eric Token, Rose's senior vice president of operations. Token worked with Bhatia at Edward Jones and rejoined her at Rose in 1996.
"(Bhatia) is a very unique individual, a very special person," Token said. "Rose's success is no mistake."
Token said he has witnessed Bhatia's maturity from manager at Edward Jones to CEO at Rose and has been impressed by the way she has handled all the increasing demands on her.
"She has come right along and led the company. It is amazing," he added.
Bhatia holds high hopes for the future of Rose and said business has been picking up even more. However, she added, that here is still a lot of work to be done to get Rose to the kind of company she envisions. For her there is no ceiling.
"I feel success is a journey not a destination," she said. |
