Oh, Brother!

The entrepreneurial bug bit Arun Parameswaran when he was a teenager in Botswana with dreams of owning a stereo system. His father agreed to pay half, but Arun had to come up with the rest. So Arun began copying tapes for family and friends and charging them for the service—and working on his customer service techniques: With every purchase, he enclosed a note that read, "Thank you very much for your patronage."

"I realized there wAas a market for tapes," Arun says, so he started a small business. At age 13, he traveled to India, negotiated bulk purchases with a retailer who knew his uncle, and began importing music cassettes. "I sold them in Botswana for five times the price," says Arun, now 24.

Along with his 22-year-old brother, Arjun, he has capitalized on that instinct for business and created a thriving Southwest Florida enterprise that helped land them on BusinessWeek magazine’s list of 25 of America’s Best Young Entrepreneurs 2007.

Their Fort Myers-based Astutant Group of Companies includes two accounting, tax and payroll businesses—Astutant in Orlando and Budgetax in Fort Myers—as well as Accu-Med Systems, a business in Tampa that provides medical billing and physician practice management throughout the state.

Arun, chairman and CEO of Astutant, and Arjun, president and managing member of Accu-Med, were selected from more than 300 reader nominations for the recognition—national exposure they hope will help as they expand their business into commercial mortgages and beyond.

GROOMED FOR SUCCESS

Their parents, Raju and Ramaa Parameswaran, moved about 30 years ago from India to Botswana, where Raju and a relative bought an accounting firm. The brothers were born and raised there, eventually moving to the United States in 2003 and 2005 to earn master’s degrees in accounting from the University of Illinois.

"At heart, we’ve always been capitalists as a family," says Arun. "We assimilated perfectly well."

Their mother, who has an MBA, and their father, a CPA, gave them only a few career options: doctor, lawyer, CPA or engineer. "I couldn’t become a history major—nothing that wouldn’t make money," Arun says, laughing.

Arun earned a bachelor’s degree at age 19 and his master’s at 20. Arjun achieved the same at 20 and 21.

"I don’t know if it was brains or a desire to get out of the educational system as fast as possible," jokes Arun. "We didn’t feel the school system was going to benefit us that much. I’d look around and see businesspeople doing well with no education. But when you get an education, you realize the value of it. It opens doors for you."

Their mother was the brains behind their first business ventures in Africa, but their philosophy about success comes from their father, who died of a heart attack last year at age 52.

"We can attribute virtually all of our success to him," says Arun. "My dad, being a CPA and consultant for many years, helped many people become millionaires. We thought maybe we should take
his advice."

Raju Parameswaran expanded his wealth not only through his accounting firm, but by starting businesses in printing and publishing, computer education, and steel wool and PVC pipe. "Most didn’t work. One or two worked very well," Arun says. "He had all the knowledge, the tools, the contacts to make things happen."

He opened bank accounts for his sons when they were toddlers and taught them to invest in the Indian stock market just a few years later, but he didn’t shower his wealth
on them.

"My dad said, ‘I don’t want to rob you of earning your own money,’" Arjun says. That meant he and his brother bid against each other to win household jobs, such as washing the family car. "[Arjun] would bid 50 cents. I’d bid 30 cents," Arun says. "We learned that nothing comes for free. We don’t have entitlements in this world."

When Arjun was 12, his father advised him to envision where he wanted to be in 10 or 20 years. The plan might change, but at least he’d have direction, said his father. "He said, ‘Whatever you’re going to be, be your best. The world’s best janitor is better than a mediocre doctor.’ That was one thing that really hit home for me," says Arjun.

WEB PIONEERS

When the boys were 14 and 12, the Internet was not yet available in Botswana, but their father saw its potential and paid for an international connection in South Africa. "I got Web design software and started learning it as a hobby. I designed my dad’s Web site and charged him $5," says Arjun. "My brother said, ‘Are you crazy? You’re charging five bucks when you spent four weeks working on it?’"

Hence, another business concept was born—Virtual Internet Africa. When Arjun went to buy a scanner, Arun went along and bartered it as down payment for creating the store’s Web site.

"My dad said, ‘In business, when somebody asks your price, you better know it on your fingertips. Don’t let anybody know you don’t know your own business.’ So at the scanner store, I quoted $1,200," Arun says. "The scanner was worth about $800. The pricing I came up with on the fly."

"We didn’t have a company yet," Arjun says, laughing. "But the guy said, ‘Take the scanner. This will be a deposit, and I’ll pay the rest later.’ I was sweating there; it was a lot of money. That was our first professional business."

They ran the company while attending school—Arun as president and Arjun as vice president—and sold the growing business six years later. At its peak, it had about half a dozen employees and was Botswana’s equivalent of a Yahoo! search engine.

Too young to drive, Arun had to walk to meetings. "Imagine a young kid walking in a suit in the blazing sun to meet a client," says his younger brother.

"I was a miser," Arun adds. "I didn’t want to pay for public
transportation."

"Arun was always a little version of Bill Gates," says childhood friend Shyam Santhanam. "I always knew Arun and Arjun had it in them to make it big." Arun and Shyam met when they were taking their high school exams early, and Arun recruited him to help on the technical side of the Internet business. "We hit it off right away. We had similar thoughts, and we were both very ambitious," says Santhanam, who now lives near Philadelphia and works in computer science.

Raju and Ra-maa Parames-waran didn’t lower their expectations for academic achievement just because their sons were running a business.

"The deal was, our parents wouldn’t interfere in the business, but if our grades dropped below an A average, we had to shut down the company," says Arun. "I felt that was quite fair at the time. Being allowed to do the business was
a privilege."

SMART MOVES

Despite their exceptional grades, accounting didn’t come naturally for the brothers. Still, Arun pursued a master’s degree in accounting, graduated with a 4.0 grade point average and, at the top of his class, won the Deloitte & Touche Award for Highest Academic Achievement in Accounting.

At age 20, he returned to Botswana to decide his next step. He knew it would be somewhere in the United States that was warm and near the ocean. In 2003, he drove from Tampa to Naples in search of a small accounting firm to buy, and he found one in Fort Myers. Within three weeks he had a work visa and took over the business. "I had no relatives in the U.S., no friends in Southwest Florida," Arun says. "But I had lots of ambition."

Mary V. Palumbo, an attorney and CPA in Fort Myers, met Arun through the broker who sold him the accounting firm. "I could see how clever and smart he was," she says. "We became friends, he became my CPA, and I became
his attorney."

She did the legal work for Arun as he acquired more businesses—with proceeds from the Internet business sale, Palumbo says.

Arun put his father’s work ethic into practice when Arjun earned a master’s degree in 2005. "[Arun] said, ‘You have to make it on your own,’" Arjun recalls. "I had to figure out how to be part of the group but expand it."

So the brother who at one time aspired to be a doctor created Accu-Med. "I combined something I have a passion for with something I studied," he says, noting that his accounting knowledge enables him to focus on medical practice management as well as medical billing.

When Palumbo decided to sell her law practice and open a commercial mortgage brokerage company in November, Arun asked to partner on the project. Mercury Direct Funding LLC is now under the Astutant umbrella, with Palumbo as president and Arun as CEO.

"I’m the sort of person who can start one office and do it well," she says. "He can take an organization and build it on a national scale. I know his family. They’re all very honorable people. You want to be involved with people who have high integrity and are smart."

With sales of roughly $4 million, the Astutant Group’s plan is to double sales every year by increasing its existing businesses and acquiring more. They consider their businesses, which employ about 50, relatively recession-proof. "The majority of our growth still comes from referrals earned through better customer service and friendly staff," Arun says.