Ready, Set, Grow! Accion Labs Predicts Brisk Growth

Kinesh Doshi is pretty good at this entrepreneur thing. In the past 10 years, he has cofounded two tech ventures—Apar Infotech and Encora—and now he is on to his third venture: Accion Labs. Founded in 2011 to provide emerging tech solutions to a range of software product companies, Accion has grown from a team of three in Pittsburgh to employing more than 30 in less than three years.

“I love Pittsburgh,” Doshi said. “We are expanding so fast we are running out of space at our offices in Upper St. Clair. Right now, we are looking to add sales, technology and program management capacity in Pittsburgh, as well as grow the operations and human resources team to keep up with the demand of the new business.”

In addition to its Pittsburgh footprint, Accion has domestic locations in Atlanta and Santa Clara, Calif., and international operations in India and Singapore. Combined, these locations bring the startup’s total headcount to more than 400 people.

Doshi pointed to Accion’s niche in the emerging technology space as the driving force behind the company’s rapid growth. Accion focuses on providing development services in Software-as-a-Service, mobile, cloud computing, analytics, open-source and big data space.

“One big reason that we’ve seen this growth is because we are in an industry that is growing rapidly,” he said. “Also, luckily the recession is over and companies are investing heavily in new technologies once again.” Besides this, he attributes his company’s success to his very strong leadership team and their focus on execution and outcome.

“We are seeing tremendous traction in the healthcare, retail, supply chain and platform software space, primarily doing product engineering and implementation work for these clients,” Doshi continued. “The demand for big data technology solutions has also been a huge growth driver for us, and the demand for migrating software from a traditional on-premise environment to a SaaS or Cloud platform is the other growth area.”

In the emerging technologies space, staying on top of the latest developments and developing intellectual property of your own is essential for sustained growth. In this respect, Doshi underscored Accion’s commitment to continuing education and R&D as a fundamental element of the company’s success.

As Accion continues to grow, Doshi is committed to calling Pittsburgh home.

“Pittsburgh is the hotbed of action for us,” he said. “We definitely intend to continue building our team here to support our customers around the world. It is a relatively low-cost city in terms of real estate cost and cost of living, you get access to a lot of talented people here but most importantly, I love the work ethic of the people here.”

“Right now, we are on track to reach around $20 million in revenues for 2013,” Doshi continued. “By the end of 2015, through organic and inorganic means, we want to reach $75 million. I think it is entirely possible judging from the current demand for our development services and the direction of the emerging technologies market.”