“I try to follow my heart and do things I’m really passionate about,” said Vijay Proddhutur (pronounced Prod-uh-tur), one of our “new” EO Dallas members who is not new to EO. Vijay joined EO in 2017 in Chicago and moved to our chapter in September 2020. Following his heart is part of what led Vijay to Dallas and into his current business.
With a business based primarily in supporting clients across the Salesforce platform, Vijay moved his business to Dallas in March 2019. A close group of friends, the business environment and the climate were appealing . Then a family loss took him back to his family home in India for several months, followed by the growing global pandemic.
Vijay’s company, Accelerize 360, has a global team that provides Salesforce solutions for industry verticals including financial services and retail. They build solutions across marketing, sales and service domains to drive customer 360. Accelerize 360 just launched their commissions module (Dinero) on the Salesforce app exchange.
Accelerize 360 came out of a first business venture in the ERP staffing space. “As we were growing that business, we wanted an application to manage it. We came across Salesforce. I went to the annual conference, and I was hooked. I fell in love with the Salesforce ecosystem with their built-in apps and integrations. I wanted to help others build it.”
Vijay is originally from Hyderabad and earned his first Masters’ Degree in Information Systems from the University of Illinois. He then went to Ann Arbor’s University of Michigan and earned an MBA. Following that formal education, he began working in enterprise consulting firms in tech transformation projects and corporate finance before starting his own company.
While helping clients is a huge goal, Vijay is passionate about building a culture “I like building teams – high performance teams that have empathy ,” he explained. “We work with people who are young professionals and are invested in developing their full capabilities professionally and personally. It’s one of the reasons why I like to do what we’re doing. We’re able to help people grow.” The Accelerize team includes 80 people, across the United States, Canada and India.
2020 brought new challenges for Vijay and his team, but he thinks there are opportunities as well. “Covid is an example of something you never prepared for. We are responsible for our people and it’s our job is to make sure we’re doing everything so we can to keep them safe and help them grow. We have seen some growth in the business in this climate as the pandemic has accelerated digitization of business processes. We were well-prepared and fortunate”
Vijay likes to play tennis, soccer and poker. He looks forward to being in an EO Dallas Forum. “I can’t wait to connect with more people in EO Dallas. I want to learn about them, their families and their business. And I love EO universities!”
