National Entrepreneurial Success Award for 2003.
(Country's fastest-growing technology company)

Himanshu Bhatia was selected for the national award by the office of Advocacy of Small Business Administration (SBA). The award would be presented during the Small Business Week honours in Washington, scheduled to be held from September 15-21

In 1993, Himanshu Bhatia founded Rose International in St. Louis, Mo., along with her husband, Gulab. Since then, Rose has grown from a localized, five-employee company to a nationwide firm employing nearly 300 people. Ms. Bhatia attributes her firm’s success to two very basic principles – a well-developed work ethic throughout the company, and a very practical, results-oriented approach in addressing customer issues.

Ms. Bhatia’s vision of what she wanted her company to become has turned into reality with Rose becoming a more complete IT services firm rather than simply a technology staffing firm. Since its inception, Rose has become of the country’s fastest-growing technology companies, ranking in the Deloitte & Touche Technology Fast 500 and St. Louis Regional Fast 50 for the past five years. The company has also ranked twice on the Inc. 500. In addition, Ms. Bhatia was named the SBA Small Business Person of the Year in 2001 for the State of Missouri.

Roses International has achieved preferred vendor status with several of its clients, including Ameren, ChveronTexaco, SBC, Maritz and Ameritech. On the government side, Rose also won prime vendor status in five out of seven service areas on the highly competitive State of Missouri Statewide IT Contract in 2002, beating out many larger companies for the contract.

Ms. Bhatia finds time to give back to the community by serving in several other capacities. Some of them include: being a mentor for Women in Technology International (WITI); serving on the MIS Advisory Board and MIS Mentoring Program at the University of Missouri, St. Louis; and volunteering as a SBA Coach to other small business owners.