GT Solar CEO plans to retire after turning $1,000 into $58m
By TODD MORRISON, Telegraph Staff
Published: Sunday, Dec. 17, 2006
Source: Nashua Telegraph
http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061217/BUSINESS/212170424/-1/style
Dr. Kedar Gupta will leave his position as chief executive officer of GT Solar in Merrimack later this month after 12 years. He founded the company in 1994.
Kedar gupta
Background: Gupta grew up in India and moved to the U.S. for a research fellowship in 1968.
Education: Ph.D. in material sciences from the State University of New York in Stony Brook.
Job History: His first job was helping make silicon wafers as a research engineer with Monsanto Electronic Materials Co. in Missouri. He was an operations manager for a high-tech company in Cincinnati when he accepted a job Nashua in 1985 at Ferrofluidics Corp. In 1994, Gupta and John Talbott co-founded GT Solar.
Future endeavors: Helping tech companies with exporting overseas; further involvement with the Small Business Development Center at UNH; possible book.
It’s hard to talk about Kedar Gupta’s high-tech success in solar energy without thinking of his wife, Renu, and her decision to at least partially let go of a dislike for cold weather. Back in 1985, Kedar Gupta, then an operations manager for a high-tech company in Cincinnati, had a hard time convincing his wife they should leave so that he could take a better job in Nashua, where the winter winds – and the snows – blow much colder.
But nobody had to tell that to Renu Gupta. After all, she, like her husband, had grown up in hot and sunny India. “This white stuff called snow is of no interest to her,” Kedar Gupta said, laughing, in his Merrimack office. Stuck, Gupta finally sold her on Nashua’s proximity to high-caliber colleges such as Harvard, which meant they would be close by when their kids attended someday. Gupta admits it was a bit of a bluff, but in the end, it worked out.
“Somehow she bought it,” said Gupta, 59. Renu learned to live with the snow; the kids went to MIT. Kedar Gupta went on to co-found what is now called GT Solar, a company he started on the cheap in 1994 with a previous co-worker turned business partner. Now, 12 years later, Gupta is retiring Dec. 31 as CEO from the company, which manufactures and sells high-tech equipment to other companies so they can in turn make solar-energy cells, modules and panels.
According to its figures, Merrimack-based GT Solar now boasts about 120 employees and had $58 million in revenues last year. Roughly 90 percent of solar photovoltaic industry belongs to the company, according to its figures.
Gupta came to the U.S. for a research fellowship in 1968, going on to get his Ph.D. in material sciences from the State University of New York in Stony Brook. His first job was helping make silicon wafers as a research engineer with Monsanto Electronic Materials Co. in Missouri.
Years later, after taking a job with the Ferrofluidics Corp. in Nashua, Gupta met John Talbott. In 1994, the two of them decided the global need for solar energy was taking off, and founded GT Solar out of their basements. Their two names make up the “GT” in GT Solar.
The initial $1000 the two had between them immediately grew with a $685,000 order from a company in Japan, with whom they had been in contact before launching the company.
In December, Los Angeles-based GFI Energy Ventures purchased the majority interest in the company for an undisclosed amount of money.
Though Gupta – Dr. Gupta, actually – is leaving on a high note, there have also been some frightening lows for the tech-savvy businessman from Hollis.
Gupta explained that about three years ago, revenues flagged. As a result, then Fleet Boston Financial, apparently trying to clean up its loans before getting purchased by Bank of America, decided to yank its credit line of $2 million dollars, which nearly bankrupted the company.
“It was a journey through hell,” Gupta said. “They took away my blood line.” GT Solar spokesman Fred Kocher, who has known Gupta for roughly 12 years, said that Gupta’s first response at that time was to cut his own, and then other top executives’, salaries.
Cuts trickled down to the middle management level until the company could pay back its debt, find new financing and secure some big orders. The company eventually got back on track by 2004 thanks to a roughly $13.5 million order from a company in Taiwan. “That was the low point,” Kocher said of the ordeal. Kocher said that cutting salaries for himself – and others who could most afford it – is typical for Gupta.
A few years ago, when the company was in the process of building it’s current 56,000 square foot facility in Merrimack, Gupta took his employees over to the construction site for their take. “Have we created the spaces correctly?” Kocher said he asked his employees, even getting input on their choice of colors. “He runs it as an employee-driven company.”
Gupta – who said he once made a one-day trip to Taiwan in order to be home back in time for one of his kids’ events – describes his philosophy as “we, we, and we.”
Many business leaders run their companies from a different viewpoint, he said. “Me, me and me. That is how it always benefits them,” he said. To illustrate the point, Gupta said that there are no reserved parking spaces at GT Solar. All employees share in the company’s profits, he said.
These days, the company has a sales office in China, where it does most of its business. In 2005, the company had $80 million dollars in revenue in China alone, Kocher said. That’s because of an effort to improve the country’s environmental situation, he said. In other countries, growth has also been spurred by the high cost of electric power.
Demand for solar power will grow as solar energy becomes more cost effective and countries work to reduce their dependence on oil, he said. Gupta, who said 90 percent of its business is for export, does business with companies throughout Asia, Europe and the United States.