Spring 2007 Newsletter
Spotlight on Shri Thanedar, Ph.D.,
CEO of Chemir Analytical Services
Shri Thanedar's journey from a poor childhood in India to the helm of a group of chemistry-based companies is a classic American dream story. Thanedar's flagship firm is Chemir Analytical Services, a suburban St. Louis provider of industrial problem-solving and analytical testing services.
Growing up in Belgaum, India, some 300 miles south of what was then called Bombay, the idea of one day running a multi-million-dollar American enterprise was no doubt quite improbable to Thanedar. The oldest boy among nine siblings, his immediate concern was helping feed his family.
By 1974, at the surprisingly young age of 18, Thanedar had earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry from a local college and was on his way to a full-time job at an atomic research center in Bombay. He earned an M.S. in chemistry while working as a health technician at the center and soon got to thinking about obtaining a Ph.D., and possibly working, outside the country. He applied to the University of Akron, in Ohio, after learning about its strength in polymer chemistry and was admitted in 1979. By the fall of 1982, Thanedar had his Ph.D., and in 1984, he completed his postdoc.
As Thanedar recalls, he was tired of the cold, and his most southern job offer came from Petrolite in St. Louis. He moved there and began using his doctorate in Ziegler-Natta catalysis to synthesize long-chain aliphatics as additives for fuels, coatings, and other products. Although Thanedar enjoyed the work, he says he became frustrated by his inability to make a real impact at the company.
With a newborn son and a wife finishing a medical school residency, it was a bad time for Thanedar to set out on his own. Instead, he decided to find a small company that he could join and perhaps someday own. "I opened the Yellow Pages," he says. "The manufacturing companies were all large, so I looked under analytical labs."
One of his calls was to St. Louis-based Industrial Testing Laboratories. Although the owner didn't have a spot for Thanedar, he recommended a nearby outfit, Chemir Laboratories, owned by Clara Craver, an expert in infrared spectroscopy. It turned out that Craver was looking to sell the business, but she had a problem. "Without her, the company was nothing," Thanedar says. His solution was to apprentice himself at night and on weekends for $15 per hour.
In October 1990, after a year as Craver's protégé, he bought the company for $75,000. Sales in his first year were $150,000. As Thanedar says, "We grew one customer, one chemist at a time." He brought in other analytical equipment and expanded the range of problems that Chemir could solve.
In 1996, Thanedar bought a St. Paul, Minn. lab called Betec; three years later he acquired Siegal's Industrial Testing Labs. By 2005, he had bought three more companies and had raised Chemir's sales to $16 million.
By Thanedar's count, his family of companies today employs 160 people, close to 40 of which are Ph.D. chemists. He owns the business outright, he says, and is looking for more acquisitions in the fragmented analytical chemistry field.