The Builder Who Never Stopped: Gireendra Kasmalkar's Journey From VeriSoft to Ideas to Impacts and Pentathlon Ventures
How three decades of relentless building led one IIT engineer to crack India's geographic code and reshape the country's tech delivery model
In 2016, at age 50, Gireendra Kasmalkar faced the kind of crossroads that defines an entrepreneur’s character. He had just completed his exit from SQS, the German software giant that had acquired his testing company VeriSoft eight years earlier. After three decades of continuous work, building companies from startup to global scale and managing thousands of employees, he had both the capital and credibility to retire comfortably.
Instead, he asked himself a question that would launch two more ventures: “What will I do with my time?” The answer revealed something fundamental about Gireendra’s nature. Even before leaving SQS, following a pattern he had established throughout his career, he had already started his next company. This relentless forward motion would drive one of the most prescient bets in Indian technology: that the future of work lay not in concentrating talent in mega-cities, but in distributing it to places most people had never heard of.
Check out the video of the conversation here or read on for insights.
The Formation Years
Gireendra’s journey began in 1987 with a mechanical engineering degree from IIT Mumbai, followed by a master’s from the University of South Carolina in 1989. His first role at Tata Consultancy Services as a software analyst from 1989 to 1992 provided exposure to the full software development lifecycle and the discipline of enterprise delivery.
In 1992, he left to start Prabodhan, working in the CAD-CAM space for over a decade. But his defining move came in 2003 when he founded VeriSoft, making a contrarian bet that independent software testing could be a standalone business. VeriSoft grew to become one of India’s leading independent testing companies, eventually attracting SQS, the German global leader in software quality assurance.
The 2008 acquisition validated Gireendra’s thesis about Indian quality standards matching global requirements. He stayed on to lead the combined India operations, eventually managing over 2,000 people and serving on boards of listed entities. It was during these years that he made an observation that would shape everything that followed.
The Hidden Pattern
While running the 1,000-person SQS India operation, Gireendra noticed something that should have been obvious: more than half his employees were commuting daily from small towns across Maharashtra to work in Pune’s technology corridors.
“I figured that in 2015-16 timeframe, the reason why this happened earlier was infrastructure. The metros had the infrastructure, the small towns didn’t have the infrastructure. This was not true anymore. The number may be larger, certainly not less than 500, but it could be even larger.”
The infrastructure transformation he observed represented a fundamental shift. Fiber optic networks had reached tier-2 and tier-3 cities. Power backup and internet connectivity that once justified multi-hour commutes were now ubiquitous. Yet the entire industry continued operating as if this transformation hadn’t occurred.
This observation crystallized into Ideas to Impacts in 2015, launched even before Gireendra had formally exited SQS. True to pattern, he couldn’t pause between ventures.
“The biggest thing on my mind was what will I do with my time. So even before I had left SQS, keeping in line with whatever I’ve done in my career, I had started on the new thing that I wanted to do. And that is Ideas to Impacts.”
Building the Smart Town Model
Ideas to Impacts launched with what Gireendra called the “Smart Town” model, establishing professional-grade development centers in smaller cities. The first center in Rajguru Nagar, a taluka place 50 kilometers from Pune, opened with immediate validation from two marquee clients: a local automobile manufacturer and a multinational that had never outsourced work beyond their premises. Both relationships continue today.
The model’s success stemmed from recognizing that distributed work requires intentional structure. Gireendra developed the “pyramid” approach, mirroring traditional onsite-offshore models but within India’s borders.
“We have an on-site metro and small town pyramid in our model, which means that yes, some people have to be on site. The seniors who have already migrated to metros will be in our Pune office. The freshers and juniors you hire in these smaller towns. So that makes the model work.”
Senior engineers with 15-20 years of experience provided technical leadership from urban hubs like Pune. Fresh graduates could begin careers close to home while accessing the same professional opportunities. The operational advantages were measurable: attrition rates in “lower single digits” compared to 30% metro average, commute times dropping from 90 minutes to five minutes, and infrastructure costs 20-30% lower while maintaining enterprise-grade facilities.
The company expanded systematically through customer demand. The Amad Nagar center launched because a customer in Boston wanted work done in his hometown. The Ratnagiri center emerged through partnership with an existing local IT company.
The COVID Vindication and VC Evolution
When COVID-19 forced global enterprises into remote work in March 2020, Gireendra’s five-year thesis received dramatic validation.
“Whatever we were trying to convince people of for the last three, four years automatically happened because of COVID. People were working from home, but those homes were not in Pune. They were gone to the native places.”
The validation attracted Anshu Goel, former head of Amdocs India and global board member, who joined as Group CEO in 2021. Ideas to Impacts now operates centers in Rajguru Nagar, Amad Nagar, and Ratnagiri, with partnerships scouted across 20 cities nationwide. The company employs approximately 150 people and offers Build-Operate-Transfer arrangements for enterprise clients.
While scaling Ideas to Impacts, Gireendra identified another geographic arbitrage opportunity. Despite Pune’s concentration of successful entrepreneurs, every major venture capital fund operated from Delhi, Mumbai, or Bangalore.
“While there was a lot of energy and enthusiasm among the entrepreneurs in Pune, not a single fund was out of Pune. All the funds were in Delhi, Bangalore and Mumbai. I felt that needed to be corrected.”
Pentathlon Ventures launched in 2017 as India’s first B2B SaaS-focused fund headquartered outside traditional VC corridors. All six managing partners had built and exited companies, bringing 150 years of combined operational experience. More significantly, they invested 25-30% of Fund 1 themselves, demonstrating unprecedented skin in the game.
The Investment Philosophy and Market Context
Pentathlon’s approach reflects Gireendra’s operational background and skepticism of pattern-recognition investing. The fund evaluates 40-50 startups monthly, emphasizing customer reference calls over pitch presentations.
“I’m not the type of investor that within five minutes, I know that this is good. I have to dive deeper and get the data and then figure out that. I try to say look at the data rather than the gut feel because gut feel has come from your past.”
Fund 1 closed at $10 million oversubscribed, deploying 23 investments. Portfolio companies include Deeptek (AI-powered radiology), Spyne (automotive photography), TurboHire (AI recruitment), and Rezolve (digital transformation). Five companies are already raising follow-on rounds in their second year, ahead of typical timelines.
In December 2023, Pentathlon announced Fund 2’s first close at ₹450 crore (approximately $55 million), marking a significant milestone for Pune’s venture capital ecosystem. The fund targets companies with $100,000-200,000 in revenue, providing initial investments of $100,000-350,000.
The market timing validates both ventures. India’s B2B SaaS sector has grown from $407 million in 2016, with current estimates ranging from $7-13 billion in 2024 depending on methodology. Projections show the market reaching $50-70 billion by 2030, representing sustained 18-30% compound annual growth. Indian SaaS companies demonstrate superior capital efficiency, with 80% maintaining burn multiples below 1.5x according to EY research.
India’s VC funding rebounded to $13.7 billion in 2024, representing 43% year-over-year growth. Policy reforms including angel tax elimination, reduced capital gains rates, and simplified foreign investment procedures have created additional momentum.
“Indian B2B start-ups are on their way to become global leaders within this decade. Add to this the tailwinds from the global focus moving to India. We are truly on the cusp of a huge virtuous cycle.”
The Systematization Challenge
As both ventures mature, Gireendra focuses on systematizing what began as intuitive pattern recognition.
“When something is new, it is always art in the beginning. There are some artists who are really good in that space. But as a business, what you want to do is set that as an organization. We could build a strong organization that would be an investment manager organization.”
For Ideas to Impacts, this means standardized processes for center establishment, talent training, and client onboarding, including programs starting in fourth-year engineering college. For Pentathlon, it involves building investment management capabilities that transcend individual fund lifecycles.
The relationship between the two ventures demonstrates the power of adjacent market strategies. The services company validates distributed work models while the investment fund backs software tools enabling distributed teams, creating self-reinforcing network effects.
The Character Revealed
Looking back at Gireendra’s three-decade journey, certain patterns reveal fundamental aspects of his character: the relentless building instinct, the inability to pause between ventures, the commitment to adjacency over radical pivots, the preference for data over intuition. When asked about his biggest concern during the SQS exit, his answer was revealing: not what to do with his capital, but what to do with his time.
This restlessness has proven productive. Ideas to Impacts has demonstrated that India’s technology future need not concentrate in already congested metros. Pentathlon Ventures has shown that operator expertise creates differentiated value in venture capital. Together, they illustrate how patient capital and operational insight identify structural opportunities before they become obvious.
As India’s digital infrastructure reaches every corner of the country and B2B SaaS becomes a dominant export category, the distributed model that required explanation in 2015 increasingly resembles the most logical approach to sustainable technology growth. Gireendra’s journey suggests that the biggest opportunities often hide in plain sight, visible only to those who combine deep operational experience with the restless drive to keep building.
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