Virtusa ran its business from a Massachusetts office park, but much of its work happened in Colombo, Sri Lanka, and in Hyderabad and Chennai, India. Its engineers built and maintained software for clients such as JPMorgan, British Telecommunications and Bear Stearns. When Virtusa went public in August 2007, offshore IT services had become a big industry, led by Indian giants. Virtusa pitched itself as a smaller, specialized rival with a Sri Lankan base.

Technology Providers, Inc.

Kris Canekeratne, a Sri Lankan-born engineer, founded the company in Massachusetts in November 1996 as Technology Providers, Inc. It later took the name Virtusa. The bet was that a firm with strong engineering in Sri Lanka could win complex software work from large Western companies. Virtusa focused on banks, insurers and telecom companies, and built most of its development centers in South Asia to keep costs down.

Bought for Two Billion

Virtusa priced its offering at $14 a share in August 2007 and listed on Nasdaq as VRTU. The financial crisis hit its banking clients the next year, but the company kept growing and later bought Polaris, an Indian financial software firm. In February 2021 Baring Private Equity Asia completed its purchase of Virtusa in a deal valued at about $2 billion, and the stock left Nasdaq.

Cover: Ship with Sails Furled and Arrow Pointing to the Right, Master W with the Key. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a ship under furled sails (work sent across the ocean).