The one-person global company - Business World India

Mahesh Murthy gives us the example of one man global company.

LAST week I spent some time with a gent who runs a company in Mumbai that sells software to customers around the world. I had invested in them years ago, and for one reason or another we couldn't catch up much in the middle, except to share notes on email.

Things were going well. He was not huge by global standards - about $250,000 in revenues, slated to double this year. Customers in more than 30 countries. Over 500,000 people around the world who'd tried his product. Over 5,000 of them who had paid for it and who use it. A well-known brand in its field.

The business was profitable. He reckons he is world No.3 in his niche. His product was acclaimed worldwide, reviewed by PC Magazine and such. All in all, it was a pretty good record - having survived through the worst downturns in the market, and still making it. And we were talking of how he'd done it.

It wasn't that he was a coding or technical genius. The gent is actually a biology grad, and to my knowledge, can't write code. But he's always known what he wanted - and has figured out some inventive ways to get things done.