When college students and creative writers are just starting out, they’re given a sage piece of advice: “Write what you know.” But even if you never become a famous author like Mark Twain (who is credited for such pithy advice), it works for many other fields and careers as well. Take the example of Gautam Rege and Sethupathi Asokan. In September of 2007, they founded Josh Software.

“It was just two programmers with no knowledge of finance, sales, marketing or domain expertise”, says Gautam. And, as is the case with most start-ups, these were lean times of bootstrapping and working seemingly every waking hour just to get their company off the ground. “We had no insurance, no savings, and we were both steeped in loans.” Their passion was programming, hence their use of the Hindi word for ‘enthusiasm’ – Josh (pronounced joh-sh). But how to translate that passion into something profitable?

Turns out, they were on the wrong path. Josh Software started out as a product company, but as any sales marketing whiz can tell you, products are more about sales and less about technology. So Gautam and Sethupathi pivoted to what they knew was their greatest strength – programming, and put products on the backburner. “Since all we knew was coding, we decided to do consulting only,” Gautam recalls. With that, Josh Software began to grow. 

Initially, they started off marketing themselves as Ruby and Ruby on Rails specialists. And as Josh Software gained renown in tech and enjoyed a few profitable years of business, they diversified and acquired expertise in Go Lang, Native Mobile Application Development, and React.JS. From there, Josh Software became consultants with added expertise in Node.Js, Python, ReactNative, Flutter, Java, becoming a trusted resource for all widely used open source technologies. “Open Source Technologies is what we believe in and strive for!” Gautam exclaims. 

It was then that the duo decided to scratch that original itch again and start building products. The difference now is that they knew what they wanted to build, coding what they know. “We didn’t want to dilute the core services of Josh,” says Sachin Sintre, Director and Head of US Operations for Josh Software. “So we started building products as separate companies. In the last five years, we have successfully planned and started four different companies which are product/ specific domain solutions-focused.”  

Josh has been delivering software since inception and after 13 years, the company still relies on referrals for their continued growth. The only difference from the beginning and now is that the company has nearly 200 employees as well as 20 interns, many of whom will then join the team this June as full-time employees. What was once the province of two young programmers has grown into a full-fledged company with a sales cycle in place for in-organic outbound sales. 

Josh Software has gone from a lean start-up to a company growing at a constant pace. They are now on-target to achieve $25M by 2025. Much like their namesake suggests, Josh Software