Deal maker

ICE PEOPLE

If there was a prize for the best deal maker in India, Deepak Ghaisas, 45, would have won it hands down. Criss crossing 45 countries, the CEO & CFO, India operations, of i-flex solutions, has cut deals in Japan and Zimbabwe to Istanbul and the US.

Only last month, he helped his company acquire the Minneapoli-based consumer-lending solution provider SuperSolutions Corporation, for $12 million in an all-cash deal.

Why is he so vital to i-flex? Because this chartered accountant, cost accountant and company secretary rolled into one is a people person. Not only does he clinch deals, he even wins friends and adapts to different cultures.

Take his complex negotiations with a Spanish customer in Barcelona whose daughter was seriously ill a few years ago. The customer continued negotiating only because a team had come from India. Ghaisas immediately made it clear that the child's health was the priority.

So talks continued after two days, when the child recovered. In those 48 hours, Ghaisas had struck more than a deal."At the end of the day, you end up with a good friend," he says.

Yet, for him, success is more than winning friends. His ability to skirt the beaten path, for instance. Instead of walking into a high-flying corporate job in the early 1980s, Ghasias chose to join his friend Raju Shete, who was providing catering services to offshore ships and helped set up a retail supermarket Foodland at Juhu in Mumbai.

Next stop was Tata Burroughs and then i-flex. And when he is not helping run i-flex, he contributes his expertise to management institutes.

Yet there's an aesthetic side to this father of two school going sons. He loves classical music, many of which are sponsored by his company. Now, that's a deal you cannot beat.