When Padma Vatsavai relocated to Baton Rouge in 1999 due to her husband’s job, she arrived to find few career opportunities that stimulated her love for technology and software development.
As Business Report details in its new Entrepreneur feature from the current issue, Vatsavai accepted the best position she could find in her field, working her way through different roles and gaining the experience needed to start her own software development firm.
“I always knew I wanted to do this, however, I knew I needed to gain some leadership skills, and I needed to build thick skin,” she says.
Vatsavai spent the next year pulling 80-hour workweeks, taking on the tasks that a full team would typically tackle at most mature businesses.
Since then, she has grown her firm, Vinformatix, to 18 employees who work with clients across a variety of industries including health care, oil and gas, education, government and research.
After nearly 10 years in business, Vatsavai and her team have successfully grown the business organically by producing high-quality results that generate word-of-mouth referrals. “Any time we are able to sit at a table with a potential client, we’ve always been able to close a deal,” Vatsavai says proudly.
As a true expert in her field, Vatsavai understands her client’s pain points and knows how to craft a custom software solution to their problems. “Technology can be applied to any industry,” she explains. “So when you have a robust team that does whatever it takes, the results can be life-changing for the client.”
Over the years, companies offering services similar to those of Vinformatix have sprouted up in Baton Rouge, but Vatsavai doesn’t view them as competition because few specialize exclusively in custom software. “We know what we bring to the table, so we stay focused on doing great work,” she says.
In recent months her team has grown, giving the firm the capacity to take on more work. As a result, Vatsavai is looking to expand her client base through existing relationships and by building new ones. “To continue to have sustainable growth,” she says, “I realized that word of mouth is not enough anymore.”
However, one challenge she has come up against with some local businesses is that they often rely on manual processes—like the heavy use of spreadsheets—and it’s often difficult to convince them of the value of business process automation. With a more aggressive growth strategy, Vatsavai’s new business development team is focused on acquiring out-of-state clients and entering the federal market.
Read Business Report’s full Entrepreneur feature. Send your comments to editors@businessreport.com.
