Ruby Sahiwal and the business of getting things done

At the opening of Escalon’s office in Mohali in September 2023, Ruby Sahiwal stood behind a red ribbon. The scissors belonged to three young women supported by Jyoti Sarup Kanya Asra, a local nonprofit. A company that earned its living handling other people’s administrative work had given the ceremonial job to someone else, too. This time, the delegation made a rather different point.

Sahiwal called the new office a tribute to the Chandigarh region. He also said, “CSR is very close to our hearts.” Escalon supported the nonprofit through its foundation, and the women invited to open the building were pursuing their graduation. In the photograph, Sahiwal is smiling behind them. For once, the business of getting things done came with a ribbon and an audience.

Much of his career has concerned work that attracts neither. Procurement. Accounting. Payroll. The systems beneath a business that nobody celebrates when they function and everybody notices when they fail. His co-founding of Escalon gave that territory a commercial proposition: let entrepreneurs hand over the recurring obligations that keep interrupting the enterprise they meant to build.

An engineer meets the office

Before the accounting company came an engineering education. Sahiwal studied aerospace and mechanical engineering at the State University of New York at Buffalo, then earned an MBA at the University of Chicago. His early work at General Electric included operations, product development and program management. McKinsey followed, with strategic and operational assignments for industrial clients.

By the time Tradeum appointed him president of industrial markets in May 2000, he had also worked at i2 Technologies. There he applied outside technologies to digital marketplaces and led a group assessing opportunities for high-tech customers. His job involved translating a possible improvement into an architecture and an implementation plan. An attractive idea still needed somewhere to plug in.

Tradeum, owned by VerticalNet, was building platforms for business commerce: catalogs, auctions and exchanges. Sahiwal arrived with experience on both sides of the proposition, industrial operations and the software intended to improve them. The setting was the internet economy of 2000, but the underlying assignment was familiar enough: make it easier for companies to transact with one another.

That background gives his later choice of business a useful context. The aerospace graduate did not remain confined to aircraft, and the consultant did not remain confined to advice. Across these roles, the practical work sat where organizational ambition met everyday execution. The transaction needed completing. The process needed an owner. Someone had to make the machinery behave.

The chore that became a company

Escalon grew out of Sahiwal’s own frustration with the back office while building businesses. Its co-founders included Anurag Pal and Sarah Lerche. The company dates its founding to 2006, in Palo Alto. Its market was the entrepreneur who had enough work to need specialist help, with little appetite for assembling every administrative department from scratch.

When Escalon and Early Growth introduced their shared branding in 2021, Sahiwal described the attraction in plain terms. Customers should be able to “just get the work done without worry, without headache.” The campaign compressed that thought into two words: “And done.” Advertising usually asks a customer to imagine something grand. Here the invitation was to stop thinking about a task.

“just get the work done without worry, without headache.”

Ruby Sahiwal, on Escalon’s proposition, 2021

There is a small joke in selling completion. A company’s books are never finished forever. Payroll returns. Tax deadlines have a habit of arriving next year as well. The promise therefore depends on repetition, on being useful again after the celebratory first delivery. A recurring chore can support a recurring business, provided the customer trusts the person taking it away.

This is also why the offering extends across neighboring functions. A new hire affects payroll, expenses and financial planning. A growing customer base brings invoices, collections and reporting. Business owners experience these as connected obligations, even when professional specialties divide them. Sahiwal and his colleagues built around that connected experience, calling the offering Essential Business Services.

Buying the expertise, keeping the people

In December 2020, Escalon announced its acquisition of Early Growth Financial Services. Early Growth supplied finance leadership, accounting and tax work for venture-backed companies. The transaction extended the combined company’s customer reach to more than 40 countries. Sahiwal, then Escalon’s chairman, described the industry as fragmented and outlined an intention to consolidate it.

The word sounds bloodless until one considers what is being combined. Financial modeling, board presentations, due diligence and everyday bookkeeping require different kinds of judgment. Bringing those capabilities together offers a client more room to grow within an existing relationship. The acquisition made Escalon’s original promise broader: more of the work could have the same address.

Full Stack Finance followed, with the acquisition announced in April 2022. It brought CFO, controller, accounting and HR capabilities, along with a stronger position in Los Angeles. It brought executives as well. Co-founder Ivan Ivankovich became chief operating officer of the combined business; Maureen Cheong took charge of PeopleOps. In a services company, the people arriving with the deal are part of what has been bought.

Sahiwal emphasized client satisfaction and cultural fit when discussing that acquisition. Those considerations suit a business whose customers are entrusting it with sensitive, repetitive responsibilities. A service menu can expand overnight through a transaction. The experience of using that menu depends on whether the teams can work together after the announcement has disappeared from the news cycle.

Sixteen years before the investment partner

New Harbor Capital invested in October 2022. Escalon described it as the company’s first investment partner in 16 years. The stated purposes were organic growth, further acquisitions and advances in technology. By then, Sahiwal was speaking as CEO, with the two acquisitions already part of the company’s recent history.

Sixteen years gives the familiar startup narrative a different pace. There had been time to serve customers, add capabilities and discover where businesses repeatedly needed help before this particular capital partner arrived. The investment was attached to an operating company with an established service proposition. The next question was how much further that proposition could travel.

Sahiwal’s subsequent move out of the CEO role also belongs in the story. Kimothy Taylor succeeded him, with New Harbor announcing that the co-founder would become chairman of the board. Jim Petersen joined as president and chief operating officer. The work Sahiwal had helped organize was now being entrusted to a new executive team.

For a founder selling customers the ability to delegate, a leadership handover has a certain symmetry. Building an organization eventually creates a task larger than any individual’s calendar. The company needs people who can run it. The announcement marked a change in Sahiwal’s responsibilities while keeping him connected to the institution he had helped create.

A different sort of opening ceremony

Return to Mohali and the picture becomes less abstract. Here was a physical office, a ribbon, colleagues and visitors. The company’s international service model depended on actual places where actual people worked. The opening gave that otherwise dispersed organization a visible gathering point, and the invited young women gave the gathering a purpose beyond a property announcement.

Sahiwal spoke at the time about entering additional markets and investing in talent development. Training and recruitment were part of that ambition. These are fitting concerns for a company selling other businesses relief from operational complexity: its own ability to deliver depends on attracting and preparing the people who perform the work.

The ceremony supplies a human detail that a transaction list cannot. An office opening is an opportunity to display executive rank. Escalon used it to give three young women a place at the front. The photograph records the decision without requiring a speech about leadership. A ribbon can be surprisingly informative about who gets invited into the picture.

Now the question has foundations

Sahiwal’s newer venture is Aulora Living, where he is co-founder and chairman. The company focuses on student housing and lists Basant Kedia as co-founder and managing director. Its public materials place an emphasis on development costs and operating discipline. The subject has changed from businesses’ administrative needs to the places where students live.

The transition is substantial. A building has land beneath it and construction work ahead of it; an outsourcing relationship has a different set of constraints. Yet there is a recognizable interest in the costs and processes that sit underneath the finished offering. Housing adds another setting in which execution can decide whether an attractive plan becomes a workable enterprise.

The line connecting these chapters is easiest to see at ground level. Sahiwal has worked on industrial operations, digital commerce and the recurring duties of running a company. He has helped assemble teams and brought specialist businesses together. At Escalon, the work accumulated into an organization large enough to pass day-to-day leadership to others. At Aulora, another operating problem has his attention.

The appeal of “And done” survives the change of industry. It expresses a modest-sounding desire with an extensive job description attached. Someone must understand the task, arrange the resources and stay responsible until it is completed. Sahiwal made that desire the basis of a business. The red ribbon in Mohali caught him at a pleasant interval: one thing finished, plenty still to do.