Bastin Gerald

Founder & CEO Profit.co

Last Reviewed: September 19, 2026

Executive Summary

Bastin Gerald founded and runs Profit.co, a SaaS platform for objectives and key results — the goal-setting framework popularised by Intel and Google — combined with task management and several hundred data-driven metrics. His argument for the product is a practical one he formed watching both large companies and startups try to run strategy out of spreadsheets. It is his second software company: he founded Apptivo, a mid-market CRM and business-application suite, in 2011, and grew it to a reported 200,000-plus customers. His background is unusual for a SaaS founder in that it starts in process engineering rather than in software — his first job, at the TVS Group in Chennai, involved re-engineering a warranty settlement process that took 210 days down to seven, work that fed into the company’s Deming Prize. Measurement and process discipline have been the through-line ever since.

Career Highlights

• Founder and CEO of Profit.co, named as such on the company’s own About Us page, last modified in March 2026; the platform is operated by Profit Apps Inc., a Delaware corporation.
• Founded Apptivo in 2011 immediately after leaving CashEdge, growing it to a reported 200,000-plus customers worldwide.
• As a process consultant at the TVS Group in Chennai, led the re-engineering of the warranty settlement process from a 210-day to a seven-day lead time, contributing to the company’s Deming Prize.
• Joined Oracle in 1998 after moving to the United States, implementing ERP software at Fortune 1000 customers and building product strategy and strategic alliances with partners including Deloitte and BearingPoint.
• Worked at the fintech CashEdge, later part of Fiserv, between Wharton and founding Apptivo.
• Contributes bylined articles on OKRs, team efficiency and leadership to Chief Executive and Insurance Thought Leadership.

Professional Journey

Gerald grew up in Chennai and graduated from the Thiagarajar College of Engineering, following it with a postgraduate diploma in business analytics from Loyola College, Chennai, in 1996. His first job was with the TVS Group as a process consultant, and it set the pattern for everything afterwards: he led a re-engineering of the warranty settlement process that reduced its lead time from 210 days to seven, a project that contributed to TVS winning the Deming Prize. The lesson — that a process measured properly can be collapsed by an order of magnitude — is visible in both companies he later founded.

In 1998 he moved to the United States to join Oracle. The work there was enterprise software at scale: implementing ERP systems at Fortune 1000 customers, then moving into product strategy, go-to-market planning and strategic alliances with systems integrators including Deloitte and BearingPoint. He studied at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in 2006, and afterwards joined CashEdge, a fintech later acquired by Fiserv, where aggregator records place him as a senior director of engineering working on architecture, infrastructure and risk-management platforms.

He left CashEdge in 2011 and started Apptivo, his first cloud venture, as a mid-market CRM and business-application suite. It grew to more than 200,000 customers globally — a self-serve, high-volume model rather than an enterprise sales one, which is the model he has carried forward.

Profit.co came out of an observation rather than a market gap analysis. Having watched both large companies and startups run their strategic planning on spreadsheets, and with OKRs returning to prominence on the strength of their use at Google and other large technology companies, he built a minimum viable product and launched it. The platform’s premise is that the OKR framework fails in practice not because the idea is wrong but because the administration of it is unmanageable by hand; Profit.co sells the administration. Its About page was first published in October 2018 and was last revised in March 2026, and still names him as founder and chief executive.

Alongside running the company he writes regularly for management publications, including Chief Executive and Insurance Thought Leadership, on OKRs, team efficiency and performance management.

Education

Thiagarajar College of Engineering

Bachelor’s degree, Engineering

Loyola College, Chennai

Postgraduate diploma, Business analytics, 1996

The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

Studied 2006; no named source establishes a degree

An earlier version of this profile recorded an MBA in General Management at Wharton. The only named source describes him as having studied there in 2006 without naming a degree, and the MBA designation traces to business databases, so it is not asserted here.