Rajesh Hukku is always on the move. This is understandable considering that i-flex solutions -- which he heads as chairman and CEO -- operates in 105 countries and has over 500 clients in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan and Russia. "I travel a lot and I am always busy. At times, I regret this, but can't help it," Hukku says.
A day after US-based Oracle bought out Citigroup's majority stake in the company in a $909-million deal, Hukku appeared jovial and told Business Standard he was a great fan of filmstars Dev Anand and Raj Kapoor and even went to the extent of mimicking their dialogues.
Of late, he has become a great admirer of Shah Rukh Khan. But he is neither a connoisseur of Hindi films, nor a great admirer of glamour and glitz (he hardly has any time for them). What attracts this high-flying executive to the Bollywood stars is their level of energy on the silver screen.
For an entrepreneur, who started a software company 13 years ago with just four people and later made it the leading firm in the global financial software sector, energy is everything. "I like people who are energetic, who dare to dream differently and make things happen," says Hukku.
How did it all begin? He was educated at BITS Pilani, and later started his career as a software code writer with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). During his tenure with TCS, he was part of a team that created a stock-trading system for a software dealer in the US.
The system helped brokers access stock quotes and financial news from various sources on a single terminal, doing away with the arduous task of searching through different networks.
Later, the dealer sold off the system to financial data provider Reuters for a whopping $150 million, while the real intellectual property (IP) owners -- TCS -- got a pittance as licence fee. This was an eye-opener for him.
"I wondered why can't we make our own products, and isn't it a good idea to launch a start-up?" The thought graduated into an idea and resulted in a company, CITIL.
Citicorp Venture Capital provided a seed funding of $400,000 and named Hukku as its CEO. CITIL was later renamed as i-flex Solutions Ltd.
i-flex has become one of the largest financial software majors, with a revenue of $185 million, net profit of $40 million and a market share of $1 billion in the financial year 2004.
The company's flagship product -- Flexcube -- has been ranked as the top-selling core banking software by the British International Banking System for the last two years.
