39 Degrees North CEO immigrated across the globe to make intelligent mapping systems

By Kurt Christian The Herald-Times – July 16, 2019

Prem Radhakrishnan’s journey from immigrant to priority contractor for the United States government is — in part — as American as apple pie.

Last month, the United States Small Business Administration announced Bloomington-based 39 Degrees North’s acceptance into a program designed to prop up businesses owned by socially and economically disadvantaged people. Radhakrishnan, the company’s CEO, immigrated to the United States from India in 2000. When he stepped off the plane at the O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, there wasn’t a familiar face in sight.

Nearly two decades later, he sat in his company’s headquarters at 908 N. Walnut St. with co-founder and COO Chris Walls to recount the steps that led to his being stranded in a foreign land — and how he mapped a carefully calculated plan to turn those humble beginnings into an advantage.

Apple pie and rock music

Radhakrishnan grew up in a lower-middle class family in Kollam, a city in the Indian state of Kerala. He said, in 1996, he was the only one from his hometown accepted into the Indian Institute of Technology. He took on student loans and started working nights to put himself through college. Before long, he was enticed by some of the hallmarks of Western culture.

He joined a ‘70s cover band to play the guitar and sing Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Deep Purple and Beatles tunes. He frequented an American restaurant and was partial to their apple pie, though, he’s since come to admit they make a much better pie in the States. He found himself saddled with student loans and had to ask his father for money to pay for graduate school entry exams.

After some friends in California helped him apply to and secure a spot at Southern Illinois University, Radhakrishnan convinced the bank to defer his student loans and headed to the United States. He was on his way to get a degree in underground construction and tunnelling when he was left hanging at O’Hare.

“The family that was supposed to pick me up got the dates confused,” Radhakrishnan said.

Radhakrishnan borrowed a phone and a phone book from the airport Starbucks and began calling everyone in the greater Chicago area with the same last name as his host family. Eventually, he lucked into calling the right number and his host family took him to their home for a quick meal. They gave him $39 for a bus ticket and sent him on his way.

In 2003, Radhakrishnan came to Bloomington to attend Indiana University, where he got a master’s degree in geography and started working at the Indiana Geological Survey. It was there that he met Walls, and their Monday night beer and wing ritual at Scotty’s Brewhouse slowly turned into business meetings about starting their own company.

“When we first started, we just wanted to create intelligent online maps,” Radhakrishnan said.

The idea was to create a better visualization of data; something like Google Earth that provided satellite imagery combined with the ability to click on a parcel of land and learn about its zoning, most recent sale, tax history, latest appraisals and more. Radhakrishnan and Wells wanted to make Geographic Information Systems (GIS) something attainable, something that could be in everyone’s hands.

In 2004, they launched what would become 39 Degrees North. The name refers to the nearest latitudinal parallel to the company’s Bloomington headquarters.

One of the company’s first major contracts was with Monroe County. Walls reduced his hours with the Indiana Geological Survey to focus more on the Monroe County GIS, but Radhakrishnan wasn’t able to tear himself away from his job with IU. He’d committed to supporting his parents back in India, so he often worked a full day at the university before staying up until 3 a.m. with Walls to make sure they would be able to deliver the product.

They ultimately designed an automated system to be placed on the county’s servers, one that would automatically scrape public information and place it into what is now called Elevate.

In 2005, they flipped the system’s switch just hours before it was due. They’ve since grown from four employees to around 10, and the company now provides geographic information systems for more than 17 counties across Indiana. Elevate’s total number of registered users hit the 100,000 benchmark just a couple of weeks ago. As 39 Degrees North branches into several new markets — cybersecurity, software engineering, cloud services and more — Radhakrishnan and Wells are angling for bigger fish.

Barriers to growth

Radhakrishnan and Wells are no strangers to the lucrative world of government contracts.

As a subcontractor, they automated the administrative duties of the federal Veteran’s Affairs office in Washington, D.C., so that money spent managing leased space could be redirected to actually helping veterans. They’ve also had subcontracts with the U.S. Army and Navy, as well as state-level contracts with Indiana’s department of revenue, office of technology, department of education, secretary of state and commercial real estate exchange.

Adding in the work they’ve done with Indiana University and the University of Kentucky, and the company’s largest annual contract tops out at $850,000.

That’s not the norm, though. Radhakrishnan said most of his company’s contracts are much less than that, and even that largest contract isn’t enough to convince federal institutions that a small, minority-owned business out of Bloomington is worth a bigger slice of the pie.

Snagging a federal contract often requires prerequisites beyond the reach of the small business. Radhakrishnan said his company has been denied a contract in the past for not having worked on five projects, each totalling more than $1 million. And being forced to work as a subcontractor once required Radhakrishnan and Walls to wait 570 days for approval.

“The size of the company is not a reflection of what we can do,” Radhakrishnan said.

As they grew their business, Radhakrishnan also started working toward his citizenship. He’d become familiar with the benefits provided to him at the state level as a minority business owner, but it would open the door to even more support if he were to prove himself a naturalized citizen. Among those supports was the U.S. Small Business Administration’s 8(a) Business Development Program for socially and economically disadvantaged people.

To qualify, Radhakrishnan and Walls had to demonstrate that their company was at least 51% owned and controlled by a citizen who is economically and socially disadvantaged. Eligible owners cannot have a net worth over $250,000. They also can not have an average adjusted gross income larger than $250,000 over the past three years, and they can’t own more than $4 million in assets. The real feat is to prove that they were disadvantaged, but also successful at the same time.

“It becomes a balancing act, almost,” Radhakrishnan said. “You have to have a proven track record.”

Walls said it took 471 days from the time they applied for the designation to the time it was approved — and though it was a challenge to demonstrate Radhakrishnan was a majority owner since he splits his time between Bloomington and the Murrieta, California, office — the hard part isn’t over yet. The company will be evaluated every year for the next nine years to determine whether it still qualifies as a disadvantaged business.

Now that they’ve procured the designation, Radhakrishnan and Walls can assume the role of primary contractor and speed that process up so it only takes around three months. The designation sets aside contracts for disadvantaged businesses, connects those businesses with specialists and provides assistance with training, counseling and other executive development needs.

Walls hopes that, in the first three years of the program, the program will help 39 Degrees North grow to 50 employees. He said most end their time with the program with an average of 250 employees.

“We’ve really worked hard, but we haven’t had the opportunity to grow the business like we wanted to,” Radhakrishnan said.