By Tony Field
A New Zealand businessman has successfully listed his small technology company, Optimizer HQ, on the German stock exchange, in the hope of attracting offshore investors.
It is a coup for Manas Kumar who came to New Zealand a decade ago with a dream of playing professional cricket.
His cricket career did not work out but instead he found himself bussing all over Auckland working a string of jobs at takeaway bars and in sales.
“A point came in my life where I said to myself ‘this is it, I can’t handle that any more. There has got to be something better out there,” says Mr Kumar.
He has degrees in maths and electronics so he decided to launch a web design company – spending $10 on a domain name.
Finding local investors to back a start-up technology company was difficult thought but in switching from web design to software development the client list grew.
Since then they have looked offshore for investor and after months of work with teams of experts in four countries they have listed the company on the Frankfurt stock exchange.
Now with just a staff of eleven the company exports business email software to a dozen countries around the world.
“Our volumes are now upwards of 400 million emails a month, which is amazing for a company to be sending out that many emails on behalf of clients all over the world,” he says.
Optimizer develops software for companies to help them manage their sales, marketing and client relationships.
Mr Kumar says it is not a rags to riches story quite yet - but he is hopeful he can inspire other budding entrepreneurs.
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