A data analytics startup on track to more than quadruple sales this year is continuing to grow in Dublin since acquisition by a Silicon Valley digital engineering firm backed by Goldman Sachs.
Gathi Analytics LLC is a wholly owned subsidiary of Infostretch, which acquired Gathi for undisclosed terms in August. All 210 employees joined the 2,500-person company based in Santa Clara, California.
Gathi, which got its start in the Dublin Entrepreneurial Center, is still hiring in Central Ohio and seeking a larger office in the suburb.
"I have this new mantra: Go where the talent is; don’t expect the talent to come where you are," Infostretch founder and CEO Rutesh Shah said in an interview.
“From the very first interaction with (Gathi founder) Vamsi (Kora) and his team, it was very clear that they know what they’re doing,” Shah said. “If you put one and one together, this is an opportunity to make it 11.”
Kora left the Columbus office of JPMorgan Chase & Co. in early 2017 to found the company, naming it after the Sanskrit word for "momentum." He had spent nine years building data analytics tools with the bank's technology hub in Central Ohio, and before that spent a decade working in data technologies at Nationwide.
"I saw there was an opportunity for someone like me to bring about the same type of services a large organization can have to smaller and midsize companies," Kora said. "Everybody says data is the fuel. If they use that fuel properly, corporations can truly get a lot of momentum in their journeys."
Although starting with smaller clients, Gathi also landed large organizations, including the city of Dublin and some Fortune 50 companies.
The city, which owns and manages the DEC incubator, offered crucial help in the earliest days, Kora said. Dublin CIO Doug McCollough offers a customer testimonial on Gathi's website.
"Coming out of a large corporation ... one thing you feel immediately is: You feel alone," Kora said. "They were way more helpful than anyone would expect form local government. ... That gave me a lot of confidence."
The startup quickly grew to 50 employees, and really took off starting in 2019, he said. Since then it doubled sales every quarter, and never needed to take on outside investors. Gathi also has offices in San Antonio, Kansas City and Hyderabad, India.
This is Infostretch's second acquisition since Goldman Sachs Merchant Banking Division and Everstone Group acquired a significant stake just over a year ago, also for undisclosed terms. A regulatory filing reported raising $4.5 million, although those reports don't always capture the final amount.
Digital engineering, which Infostretch describes as filling the gap between traditional IT services and in-house engineering, is expected to surpass $1 billion market size in the next four years. Founded in 2005, the company added mobile app development in 2008 and cloud computing services in 2014.
Infostretch chose to acquire a talented team rather than build a data analytics division from scratch, Shah said. In Gathi, he found a like-minded entrepreneurial culture and strong capabilities to help clients organize and query vast troves of anonymized data.
"You can help them realize their digital vision with precision," Shah said.
For example, the combined team is helping a diabetes management company migrate operations to the cloud and make sense of vast amounts of patient data, including signals from wearable devices, to help patients keep symptoms in check. About half of Infostretch clients are in healthcare, and Gathi had focused on insurers and financial institutions.
“Gathi has shown impressive growth with blue-chip customers and has demonstrated its commitment to quality and partnership with its clients,” Harsh Nanda, managing director in Goldman Sachs Asset Management and Infostretch director, said in a news release.
Three days after the deal closed in August, Kora hosted a celebratory dinner for staff. Shah and other senior executives flew in from the coast.
"That showed a lot about how much they care about people," Kora said.
