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'High school wasn't for me'

Nitish S Rele

It pays to be a high school dropout. At least, it did for Pankaj Chowdhry, president and chief information officer of companyfinance.com, an impartial capital matching firm in Burlingame, California.

Companyfinance.com assists middle-market companies find the right lending institutions. "We act as a hub for business loans," said the 27-year-old. "We can help find financing of $ 1 million and more. Our largest loan was for $ 15 million. We are working on even larger loans right now."

Recently, companyfinance.com signed an exclusive deal with American Express, the financial advisory giant.

"American Express will forward us their deals and we will send them some of ours," said Chowdhry. "They identified us as a dominant player in the industry."

Born in New Delhi, Chowdhry moved with his parents to the US when he was two years old. Chowdhry went to the Cupertino High School in California from where he dropped out.

"High school was just not for me," he justifies. "I knew what I wanted to do and that was to learn what was going on in the outside world. I began leaning toward technology mainly because my elder sister was working at Silicon Graphics in the late '80s. You could say that I was inspired by her work, which was a combination of technology and medicine."

Chowdhry took up a job at Olympian Graphics, a printing company. "I started low as a pre-press guy and worked my way up," he says with pride. He ended as vice president of information technologies at the firm. "I learnt to expand business as we delved into other areas such as digital imaging. All of our clients were high-tech software companies."

After three-and-a-half years, he started Axonet, a Silicon Valley-based Ethernet switch manufacturer. Thereafter, he served for three years the West Coast technical director for PC Week, a division of Ziff-Davis Publications and wrote a column, Outside the Box.

"We do plan to take our company public one day," said Chowdhry. "We are still a pretty young company having started just last year in June."

Companyfinance.com employs 35 people but deals with an industry worth $ 2.6 trillion, says Chowdhry, adding, "We have been fortunate to attract some really talented people to our firm."

Companyfinance.com compares a firm's financial profile against the lending institution's criteria of its network member lending institutions.

"Our analysis tells us which lending institutions are most likely to place capital with a company," explains Chowdhry. "We immediately forward the profile only to those lending institutions who compete to offer the best terms."

Where does Chowdhry foresee himself 10 years from now?

"I will probably be financing start-ups," he says with a laugh. "There are so many successful Silicon Valley Indian entrepreneurs who are enjoying fame and money. But we have a country out there that can benefit from us."

Next: Burton withdraws anti-India amendment

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