, 42, founder-chairman of QXSystems, the US company that offers virtual workplace software solutions, is passionate about bringing up his four children. "I stay home in Florida as much as possible. It detoxifies me from daily stress," says Karlstedt, owner of the $50 million company which was set up in 1999. It is not difficult to see why Karlstedt zealously guards his free time.
"I had a burn out at 33 when I was building my air-conditioning business in Finland," says the Helsinki-born entrepreneur.
Between 1988 and 1998, Karlstedt worked like a maniac to build his company Coolex.
In 10 years, Coolex launched 200 products, ranging from 5 KW condensing units to 2500 KW water chillers, and became the third largest cooling systems player in Scandinavia. But by 1998 Karlstedt had had enough. He sold the hardware business and moved to the US in search of a new career.
"From my own money I set up QXSystems, an international business and IT engineering firm, specialising in building virtual organisations and related engineering solutions," Karlstedt says.
He also decided to enroll in a masters' programme for organisational development at The Fielding Graduate Institute in California and later acquired an MBA from Kennedy College in Switzerland.
Karlstedt was in India last fortnight to announce the launch of his new virtual workplace software product, WorkACE. This was developed at QXSystems' two-year old engineering centre in Chennai.
QXS offers several other high-tech software solutions for the online working community and Karlstedt feels that India is a big market for the new management system. "WorkACE has been designed for the mobile, global and virtual organisation," he says.
In India, all knowledge-based companies "� IT firms and management consultancies "� could be WorkACE clients, feels Karlstedt. Little surprise, then, that QXS set up a sales office in Bangalore that "houses nearly 10,000 IT companies. That is our market," he says.
The government could also be a big client, he feels. The initial plan is to push the product in India. "There is immense potential and we may need more people at our engineering centre once requests for customising the product start flowing. For now, we have anchored ourself in this society and plan to grow here."
