MASTERMIND: Bhushan Kulkarni

Born in Mumbai, India, Bhushan (pronounced BOO-shun) Kulkarni came to the United States to study engineering in 1985. Three years later he took an internship at Ford Motor Company and told the human resources department he wanted to live near a university town. They suggested Ann Arbor. He rolled into town in a 1977 Oldsmobile, and never left.

"I was supposed to be here for the summer, and that was 20 years ago, so it's been a long summer," said Kulkarni, now 44 and president and CEO of GDI Infotech, the third company he's built and grown while living in the Ann Arbor area. "I think I probably got (the equivalent of) a couple of MBAs in the process," Kulkarni said. "I've pretty much made every mistake you can think of."

He's built every hard-earned lesson into a business philosophy that made GDI Infotech the Inc.com fastest-growing private company in Michigan in 1999 and 2000 and has it growing 20 percent a year even in the current slow economy.

It goes something like this:

• Experiment with ideas from the bottom, up. Get customers to like your ideas and they'll help you refine them.
• Listen to your customers. It doesn't matter how smart you are if you're not giving them what they need.
• Surround yourself with a good people - including a strong management team and a committed advisory board - and trust their expertise.
• Remember, a great idea doesn't make a business. It's not a business until someone decides to pay for it and decided they want it again and again and again.
• Expect change; and change with the times.

Kulkarni's first venture after three years at Ford was Quantum Consulting, an extension of the engineering consulting he'd already been doing. When he sold his shares of Quantum, the high-end consulting firm had 1,800 employees.

Next he launched InTouch, an international callback company based at a hub in San Diego. InTouch provides debit card and calling card telecommunications in third world countries. It grew quickly, and after three year Kulkarni got out. Both companies are now part of other companies.

"I told myself, 'You have built a couple good small companies, now it's time to really build a long-term sustainable enterprise.'" said Kulkarni, who now lives in Saline. "I wanted to focus on building something that's here after I'm gone. By that time I was fairly financially independent, and I wanted to play this game for the long haul."

When he started GDI Infotech (originally called Global Dynamics Inc.) in 1993, it was an enterprise software development firm with clients who were just beginning to wonder what Y2K would do to their com. As dotcoms crashed, GDI reinvented itself and changed its focus to business consulting. Today the company has clients in 18 different states and specializes in busting the information silos within large corporations – integrating applications and databases that previously didn't talk to each other. GDI Infotech's growth has earned Kulkarni accolades as an entrepreneur, but he's also deeply involved in Ann Arbor's business and technology community – as a past chair of the  board of directors and on boards and executive committees that touch the arts, technology, education and entrepreneurship.

When it's time to unwind, Kulkarni turns to music. He plays the harmonica, some violin, guitar and congo bongo drums, and he says nothing relaxes him like jamming with his three sons (ages 9, 12 and 15), all of whom play multiple instruments, too. He also performs at special events with a band called Utsav, the Sanskrit word for "Celebration."

He's been able to thrive in Ann Arbor because the community is small enough that people get to know each other well, yet large and diverse enough that they can find just about anything they need. Music, cultural events, technology and lots of smart people to hire. It's all here.

"I came here with nothing." He said. " I came in my big, old Oldsmobile, and what this place has given to me is just amazing. I've traveled around the world enough to realize this doesn't happen anyplace else. If you're willing to work hard, anything is possible here. I consider it my duty to give back to the community."