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Emerging Business: A Report on New England's Growing Companies: SBA Program Delivers - Award-winning firms cite help in getting established By Jerry Ackerman, GLOBE STAFF Two small Massachusetts high-tech companies will be honored today by the US Small Business Administration as evidence that a controversial program designed to help budding young minority-owned businesses does, in fact, deliver. As it happened, the program, gives an edge to start-up companies owned by ethnic minorities seeking certain federal contracts, brought no immediate income to either firm; both had to bid for their first contracts. But the founders say that for each, the SBA's 8(a) program was important in helping establish their credentials in a crowded field which they might otherwise have been ignored. Any, they say, the work they received under the program provided financial stability while they built up their businesses. "It was like having a mentor," said Triveni Pathway, 52, the Indian-born founder of Mayflower Communications Co. of Billerica. "The company must do its own marketing, but if the SBA qualified you, the customer knows you can do the work. Mayflower, founded in 1986, specializes in global positioning satellite (GPS) technology and is developing devices to protect vital airplane navigational gear against outside radio jamming. It has grown from two employees to 20, Upadhyay said, and had "between $2 million and $3 million" in revenues last year. The 8(a) program is named after the section of the federal Small Business Act that describes it. It was established in 1969 to help "socially and economically disadvantaged individuals," covering more than 40 specific ethnic minorities. The program has come under frequent fire, accused of failing to foster enterprises with growth potential and creating a sinecure for firms that relied on it for all their income - and went out of business when their eligibility expired. The SBA acknowledges the program had flaws and says it has tightened up its rules since Republicans threatened to kill it in 1996. We're here to help companies grow so they can sustain themselves," said Barbara Manning, a program manager at the SBA's office in Boston. Upadhyay will be named the SBA's 8(a) Graduate of the Year, marking his firm's success as its eligibility is expiring. Arriving in the United States in 1968, Upadhyay earned a master's degree in electrical engineering from Princeton University and a doctorate from the University of Texas. He then worked for 13 years on GPS projects for Texas Instruments Inc. in Austin and the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory in Cambridge. Upadhyay said he saw that mobile telephones, laptop computers, video games, and other electronic applications were generating radio waves that could interfere with GPS systems, including aircraft navigational units. That is why airline passengers now are ordered to turn off such devices during takeoffs and landings and use of cellular telephones is forbidden at all times during flights, he said. Upadhyay said he set up Mayflower to find ways to protect GPS receivers from this interference. Ten prototype antijamming units that use patented technology Upadhyay and Mayflower developed are being tested and evaluated by airlines and others. Upadhyay said he expected 8(a) to give Mayflower a boost at the beginning, but soon found his primary potential clients, the Air Force and Federal Aviation Administration, preferred competitive bidding to encourage innovation. As a result 8(a) has provided Mayflower only one-fourth of its $20 million in total revenues over 12 years, he said. Its greatest value, he said, came in 1990, when Mayflower was given a noncompetitive, five-year $2.8 million FAA contract.
Contact:
Pamela Stoner
Mayflower Communications Company Inc. |
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