Mr. Talwar is Founder and CEO of Talent Burst, Inc., a provider of contract IT staff augmentation services based in Natick, MA. Since its inception he and his team have led TalentBurst through successive quarters of revenue and profitability growth.

Prior to founding TalentBurst, Mr. Talwar was Vice President of Business Development at Hudson Global Resources (NASD: HHGP), a publicly traded spin-off from Monster Worldwide (parent company of Monster.com). At Hudson, Mr. Talwar spent seven years growing a start up division to a peak of $ 53 million in revenues before its acquisition by Monster Worldwide. At the time of his departure he was managing hundreds of employees across three regions.

Mr. Talwar is considered by many as a visionary in the professional services industry. He is often quoted in several industry publications and journals. He holds an undergraduate degree in Economics from the SRCC, the leading specialty business school at Delhi University in India. He currently lives close to downtown Boston with his wife.

Could you describe the journey that led to the founding of TalentBurst.com?

I am a graduate of Sri Ram College of commerce in New Delhi, India. Right out of college I was hired by KPMG, which was quite a dream company to work for.  I come from an entrepreneurial family and in 6 months I got tired of working for a large corporation and wanted to start something on my own.  
A great opportunity came my way when my cousin Satinder Garcha started People.com.  We provided companies in the US with highly trained professionals in various areas.  We had a wonderful back-office infrastructure in India and in 2000 we were acquired by Monster.com and it helped Monster launch Monster India.

With the learning I gained from my previous experience I launched TalentBurst.com in 2002. We started with just my two partners Deep Deshpande, Baljit Gill an myself, now we have 175 employees and have been ranked by Inc 5000 as the 649th fastest growing company in the US.

Could you describe the core services of TalentBurst?

TalentBurst is a SOMWBA certified (M/DBE) business enterprise providing process-based technology staff augmentation and regulatory/banking compliance solutions. The technology consulting part of business is growing by leaps and bounds and has grown by 250% since same time last year.  The banking compliance piece is currently 15 % of our business.
The company has 27 active paying customers, with an emphasis on the credit card/financial services space. Major clients include Visa, MasterCard, The Home Depot, Metavante, Wells Fargo Bank, AG Edwards and Barclays Bank.

What services do you provide in the banking compliance space?

After 9/11 the Patriot act was passed and there were several banking and anti money laundering rules and regulations enacted by Congress.  We work with banks to help them implement technology based solutions that will ensure compliance with the Bank Secrecy and Patriot Act. We work with several foreign banks and domestic small and mid size banks. We are an exclusive implementation partner to a large Fortune 500 firm that caters to this market almost exclusively.

Your technology consulting business is growing at a rapid rate, over 400% in the last two years. What is the key to your success?

We hire the finest talent and are able to retain our employees for a long time. I believe in treating employees the way I like to be treated and thus we are able to retain quality people. We never cut corners when it comes to employee benefits.

We are also a small privately held company. This helps us make decisions quickly and easily.  Thus we are able to move nimbly unlike large companies and that helps us beat our competition by swifter decision making, better customer service and of course price.

You were hit with a law suit right when you started the Company. Could you describe that experience?

 After launching the business in 2002, we were sued two years later by a major U.S. corporation, over a noncompete issue. The suit temporarily barred us from providing IT consulting services in most major metro markets. At the time, I was recently married and had sunk all of my cash into TalentBurst. The suit was ultimately settled out of court in October 2004, the immediate impact was devastating. We were five minutes away from closing our doors and at one point I even attended a franchise seminar for a fast-food retailer, as I began to consider career alternatives. I am pleased that we came out of that and have made TalentBurst a success.

What was the secret to bringing about the turnaround and making TalentBurst a success story?

All of us at the company were convinced that our service offering was the best and simply decided that failure was not an option. We flew cross country, met with all our clients and made them believe in TalentBurst and then delivered on what we promised. All three of us really gave this business our 200%.

A $150,000 line of credit from Bank of America provided the team with a temporary safety net. We decided that the right thing to do was to diversify and we did that by entering the banking and regulatory-compliance markets, helping customers to implement technologies to adhere to the Patriot Act and the Bank Secrecy Act.

What does the future hold for TalentBurst?

We are bullish on our future. We just opened a new office in Raleigh NC, with Atlanta opening within a month. Our California office is planned to open its doors in the first week of January 2008. I hope to reach $40 million in revenues in two years.

In the post-bubble period what advice do you have for entrepreneurs who may be thinking of starting a company in technology consulting?

Entrepreneurs should identify a niche area that is hot and provide specialized consulting in that space. For example we identified our niche in the credit card and compliance space.  There are plenty of opportunities in several areas like healthcare billing and others.

Is there anything else you would like to share with our readers?

Yes.  My mother runs a school in India for 800 underprivileged children. I am working to raise scholarship money to bring students to the US and to support the running of the school. If people are interested they can contact me at brad@talentburst.com.

Thanks for your time

Thank you

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