One day in 2003, Ravi Singh, a bearded, turban-wearing Sikh, was walking to a meeting with a Member of Congress in the bowels of the Rayburn House Office Building when someone asked if he was the IT guy who'd been called to fix a glitch in his office computer network.
Seven years later, Singh has emerged as the Global Campaign Guru, the one individual who seems to have come closest to achieving the goal of bringing the word "World" into "World Wide Web" e-democracy.
Launched 10 years ago as a one-stop-shop for U.S.-based political campaigns, Singh's ElectionMall.com, partnered with Microsoft, has morphed into a political phenomenon whose reach now extends from Washington and Los Angeles to Brussels, Mexico City, Kiev and Kuala Lumpur. Its client roster has blossomed from 50 campaigns in 2006 to more than 1,800 last election cycle, including 14 state political parties spanning both sides of the aisle.
Last month, Singh helped engineer a Herculean transformation of e-politics in Colombia, where he mobilized a team of 80 technicians working 24/7 over 50 days to bring web-based campaigning to the successful presidential campaign of Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos.
Singh, who earned the moniker "Campaign Guru" in a 2004 Parade Magazine profile, admits to a passion for e-democracy, but confesses that he is not - and never has been - "the Indian IT guy." He never took a single course in computer science, but does seem to have an intuitive sense of how powerful new web technologies can help political campaigns generate money, votes and awareness.
"When Ravi started talking e-democracy to candidates and campaigns in 2000, the reaction was, ‘this computer stuff is nice, but what does it have to do with getting me elected?'" says Aaron Ronsheim, an ElectionMall.com director in the company's Washington, D.C. office.
Nobody's asking that question anymore.
By 2006, after having tasted success with some of its campaigns, Singh's company developed its own Content Management System, or CMS, and was soon working on its own "Campaign Cloud," allowing clients to access sophisticated social media, fundraising management and other campaign tools without having to incur significant software acquisition costs. With ElectionMall.com, a relatively modest monthly pricing model gives campaigns access to software whose acquisition costs would otherwise be out of the question.
Singh's concept of software-as-a-service (SaaS) brought cutting-edge technology to campaigns of all sizes, and in the process, the company became attractive not only to campaigns in advanced democracies like the United States and in Western Europe, but in developing countries as well.
What separates Singh from the legions of campaign consultants is the product he offers. "We provide the technology itself, not consulting, and we never cross that line," he says.
"People speak of the Internet as a great political equalizer, but that's not really accurate," Singh said recently. "In 2008, both McCain and Obama had access to the same Internet infrastructure, but Obama did a better job executing. He showed what he web could do, but he also proved that the message and the messenger are critical." Singh provides the infrastructure: the message is up to you.
The company's mission is to promote democracy by providing non-partisan, non-ideological software-as-a-service to the campaign and election industry itself. There are no pollsters working for ElectionMall.com, no public relations experts, no media buyers, no professional political fundraisers.
Prospective new clients are given a binding five-year non-disclosure agreement, ensuring that their data won't be sold or given to third parties. It's an important assurance for domestic campaigns, but it's indispensable for opposition political parties in countries where democracy is fragile.
Ten years after launch, any given day might find Singh meeting with prospective franchisees in Mexico City or Brussels - the business is quickly expanding into new markets every day - or addressing members of the Irish Parliament, where Singh envisions revolutionizing the election process (Ireland's web penetration is now at 56% and there are more Facebook accounts than there were voters in the last national election). Most recently, the company inked a strategic relationship with Microsoft, becoming the software giant's arm in the political arena.
"Each country faces its own challenges over technological growth," Singh notes, "and in every one of these countries, each and every political candidate for local school board and Congress has to confront wave after wave of computer evolution."
That's fertile ground for ElectionMall.com's second decade - and for Ravi Singh, whose company is growing by leaps and bounds bringing the World Wide Web to the entire world.