INDUS Technology, Inc. was founded on June 21, 1991, by Kathy Sridhar and her
former husband Seshadri Sridhar. During their marriage, Kathy and Sridhar (it
is common
for men from India to use only their last name in communication) made many
trips to India, including a six month venture to find and adopt their son,
Sunil. Originally, the intent of forming a company was for the purpose of importing
items for sale from India. As both Kathy and Sridhar had attained their Doctorate
of Philosophy in Mechanical Engineering and were active in academia, the company
later provided a convenient mechanism for consulting; such as participating
in a joint venture to perform a technology transfer study for the National
Laboratories of the Department of Energy.
Jim Lasswell and Kathy came together in the mid-nineties and were married in
2001. During their early time together, Kathy maintained the company pretty
much
in mothballs until Jim’s company, OGDEN Corporation (a Fortune 100
New York based conglomerate) announced its intention to exit the Defense Industry.
Jim was appointed President of the Defense sector and led the divestiture of
all Ogden’s Defense Companies leaving the future uncertain for his employment.
Kathy had a position leading sales and development for a multi-national company
headquartered in Paris, France. Although she did not care for that company’s
style of management, frequent trips to Paris and other areas provided enough
incentive to put up with the French style of management. Both Jim and Kathy
frequently chided each other to “quit their day job” and start
building up INDUS.
In mid-1997, both Jim and Kathy knew that they were not going to work much longer
in either of their companies and together crafted a business plan to begin
contracting with the newly arrived Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command
(SPAWAR HQ) and SPAWAR Systems Center, San Diego (SSC-SD). Late that same year,
a small task was contracted to INDUS for approximately $130,000 that utilized
a number of expert consultants in Digital Signal Processing for LINK 16 Antenna
Design
and allocated a few hours to Jim and Kathy for management. This part-time (nights
and weekends) work continued through the early parts of 1998 until Kathy quit
her day job in August 1998 to begin marketing additional work for INDUS.
So, Why is the Company Called INDUS Technology, Inc.?
Together, with Kathy working full time and Jim working part time for INDUS,
they were able to market some small efforts to keep the company
alive.
In late 1999, INDUS was selected as a subcontractor to Booz Allen Hamilton
on a SPAWAR Contract called Program Management Team Omnibus (PMTO) that really
started the INDUS growth engine. Another significant event was Kathy
joining the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA) where she grew
to become President of the San Diego Chapter and a Trustee to the National
Board
of Directors.
This helped little INDUS to be recognized as a real player in the San Diego
Defense Industry. Jim remained at Ogden to pay the bills until the last
OGDEN Defense Company was sold on March 31, 2000. He then joined INDUS full
time,
as employee
number 3, on April Fools Day, and the rest is history.
So where did the name INDUS come from? When the company was formed, the
name was taken from the fact that Seshadri Sridhar was from INDia and Kathy
was from the US. Thus the INDUS name was formed from the first three letters
of India and the abbreviation US. Also, the INDUS
River
Valley, a very beautiful landmark in Northern India/Pakistan, is the inspiration
for company names both locally and internationally.
So now you know
the rest of the story...
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