Percy Bhathena is your typical Internet CEO. With short-cropped hair, glasses, a goatee, a penchant for video games and casually clad in a button down shirt, there’s little to distinguish him from other 20-something Web gurus.
Like many of his peers, Bhathena exhibits an easy, friendly manner, despite the grueling hours and quick pace that are commonplace for fledgling netrepreneurs. And like his contemporaries, Bhathena is open about his business, WISP (Wireless Internet Solution Providers), its operations and his plans to position WISP to compete from a geographical location not exactly known as a hotbed for Internet start-ups.
While WISP has yet to make a lot of noise in the field, if Cleveland is ever to become a player in the high-tech world, it’s people like Bhathena who will lead us there. That’s why Cleveland needs to focus its resources on the future.
When Bhathena begins to discuss his vision for applications of wireless Internet service beyond simply connecting to the Internet on the fly, the unassuming 25-year-old suddenly grabs your attention. You listen intently as he explains how those applications can benefit industries you wouldn’t normally consider, wondering how, indeed, it could work. And then he pulls out a prototype for one of those ideas and you realize Bhathena may be on to something big.
The prototype is a software application for Palm Pilots and other hand-held personal digital assistants (PDAs) that requires users to sign in before providing access. It’s designed around the idea of biometrics to authenticate the signature, and if that sounds one step away from a retinal scan, the comparison is not that far off.
Explains Bhathena, “We were looking for a way to lock access to the mechanism (Palm Pilot), so that we could ensure security. The software allows you to sign directly onto the screen. It learns your signature and then compares the sign in to the signature that’s been burned in.”
What’s even more intriguing is that it’s nearly impossible to forge your way in, says Bhathena. That’s because as the device learns your signature, it also measures the average time it takes to sign your name, how many times the stylus leaves the screen and several other variables that ensure forgery is next to impossible.
So if you try to copy the signature, or even sign a piece of tape and put it over the device to trace, your odds of gaining success are minimal, at best. In fact, the design is such, says Bhathena, that it’s equivalent to using a password several hundred characters long.
For Bhathena, it’s this type of creativity and solution seeking that drives WISP’s business model. This specific prototype was designed with two clients in mind, Bhathena explains, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter and a consortium of New York area hospitals.
The New York financial giant wants to issue Palm units to its external sales staff and keep them connected to the company’s network system through a wireless Internet connection. The doctors would like to find ways to use Palm Pilots to write prescriptions and e-mail them directly to pharmacies. The hospitals are exploring the possibility of using hand-held devices to maintain patient records and migrate to a paperless database system.
WISP’s involvement began because of its wireless technology, but even its programmers weren’t initially able to overcome Morgan Stanley’s concerns about security. What safeguards, asked Morgan Stanley execs, were in place to ensure that no one could get unauthorized access to the financial giant’s sensitive information or that if a hand-held unit were stolen, the perpetrator couldn’t access the device?
The solution arrived in what some would consider an unconventional way, but for Bhathena and his team, it was actually part of their process.
“We were playing video games around the office one night, and as we were a bit more relaxed, started thinking about potential solutions. We thought we could build frame relays to accommodate all the security issues that were raised about connecting sensitive networks directly to the Internet,” he says, matter-of-factly. “So we got permission from the network operation centers (NOC) to put a WISP box directly on top and reroute private pipes to our network. That seemed to do the job.”
In layman’s terms, WISP would create a private connection to the Net while still using a public network system for access and transport. The second concern — a stolen unit — was addressed through the signature encryption software.
“Nobody’s doing it that way,” he says. “It was a solution waiting to be found.”
Such is the fast-moving world of WISP. Bhathena founded the company two years ago with two friends. Today, he employs seven at WISP’s Cleveland office, three in Washington D.C., one in Pittsburgh and one in Denver. The company may not be raking in millions, but Bhathena proudly claims, “We’re an Internet company that’s no longer losing money.”
Add to that WISP’s high-profile client list, which includes J.P. Morgan and Merrill Lynch, and his group of technology partners, which includes Bell Atlantic, Hughes Network Systems and Penn State University, and Bhathena’s goal of growth through strategic partnerships becomes clear.
Not afraid to share technology, Bhathena launched the company after cold calling Bell Atlantic, telling executives there he had an idea for wireless Internet connections and asking for flat-pricing that he could pass on. He’d done his homework, compiling a market survey from potential customers, and at the resulting meeting, brought along “two white-haired gentleman” to add a bit of credibility and overcome any age problem Bell Atlantic had.
“We told them we had acceleration software which would speed up connection to the Internet,” says Bhathena. “They felt we had a better mousetrap, so they gave us what we wanted.”
Since then, the company’s branched off in other aspects of the wireless Internet solution market, and Bhathena is looking at trying to take WISP public later this year. He is already preparing for what would be a grueling road show, and more important, is anticipating the type of tough questions potential underwriters and brokerage houses are sure to ask: What about his age, management experience and technology background? (He has a degree in philosophy).
His answers are surprising. He’s looking at candidates to take on the CEO job at WISP, either a well-known COO looking for a new challenge or someone with vision already in the industry.
“I don’t have an ego about where I have to be in this company,” he says. “It doesn’t have to be CEO. What’s more important for me is to make this company successful.
“If that’s with me as CEO, that’s fine. If not, I’m flexible.”
How to reach: WISP, (216) 739-1383
Dustin Klein ([email protected]) is editor of SBN.