In the early 90s, Piyush Goel learned to code in COBOL. It taught him to think in a structured, logical sequence, break a problem into steps, and be precise about it. Ever since, the habit of structured thinking has quietly shaped how he approaches business problems, long after he stopped writing a single line of code.
“The stubborn curiosity about tech that started with COBOL stayed with me far longer than the language itself,” says Piyush, CEO of Beyond Key, an end-to-end global technology solutions provider, in a conversation with The Global Indian.
An entrepreneur and experienced technology executive Piyush was named among the Top Titan 100 Chicago 2024.
Headquartered in Chicago, his company Beyond Key serves companies across India, the US, the UK, Canada, Europe, Germany, Australia and other parts of the world.
From corporate life to entrepreneurship
“There’s no single origin story here. It’s a chain of jobs, bets, some that paid off and some that didn’t,” says Piyush, who started at Modi Xerox in 1998 as a deputy manager. That was his first real exposure to how a large, process-driven organisation runs.
A year later, he ventured into entrepreneurship as co-founder and CEO of Ebot Technosoft. “In a corporate job, your lane is defined. As a founder, everything is your lane. You learn ownership fast, or you don’t survive it.”
Ebot Technosoft gave him an early and fairly intense education in technology. “I travelled a lot in that role, and we ended up forming a company in New York, where I was at the helm of our ecommerce growth push.”
That period also saw Piyush deeply involved in the Y2K problem and working with Microsoft C# when the technology was still finding its footing. “None of that was glamorous at the time, it was long hours and a lot of unfamiliar ground, but it quietly groomed me for what came next.”
By the time he was ready to start something of his own again, Piyush understood technology, international business and ecommerce in a way he hadn’t a few years earlier.
Beyond Key was founded in 2005. The hardest transition, he says, wasn’t starting the company but growing it beyond the stage where everyone knew everyone.
“When you’re 20 people, a hallway conversation solves most problems. Past a certain point, you need real systems, leaders who don’t need you in the room, and accountability that doesn’t depend on your memory of who promised what,” says Piyush, who was also involved in other ventures, including Unified Technologies in 2008 and Prakash eSolutions, which included uRead.com, in 2010.
“Not every one of those worked out the way I hoped, and I have made my peace with that. You learn as much from the ones that stall as the ones that scale,” says the Chicago-based CEO, who believes helping clients requires a mix of digital transformation, strategic innovation and constant learning.
In 2017, he relocated to Chicago and set up Beyond Technologies LLC as the global headquarters. “That wasn’t a symbolic office opening. It was about sitting closer to the customers we wanted to serve and understanding their markets from the inside rather than the outside.”
Today, Beyond Key has around 350 people across the US, Australia and India, serving clients in healthcare, insurance, nonprofits and a growing range of other industries. Its technical capabilities have expanded too, increasingly into AI and agentic systems.
People first, always
What hasn’t changed is Piyush’s belief that people come first.
“Take care of your team, and they’ll take care of your clients. That’s not a poster on our wall, it’s how we’ve actually operated,” says the entrepreneur who completed an executive programme in “Artificial Intelligence Implications for Business Strategy” at MIT Sloan School of Management.
He says running an organisation spread across countries and cultures requires trust at every level, and giving people enough freedom to own their ideas rather than simply execute someone else’s. “That approach has paid off in the numbers too. We’ve been growing at roughly 22% a year.”
Another proud moment for Piyush was when his company was recognised as a Great Place to Work for seven years running. “None of it belongs to me alone. Our people built the capability, our clients bet on us early, and our leadership team built what let us scale. An award is a good moment to say thank you and get back to work.”
Beyond Key has also received awards, including a Stevie Award for “Company of the Year” in the Computer Software category and a bronze award in the “Most Customer Friendly Company of the Year” category at the 2021 Best in Biz Awards.
Learning to think differently about AI
Piyush completed the AI executive programme at MIT Sloan in 2018. At the time, AI was beginning to attract wider attention for its enterprise applications.
“I went in wanting to pressure test where we already stood.”
Beyond Key was already working on early AI implementations, and Piyush wanted to compare its work for clients with where academia and the broader industry thought the technology was heading. “That gap, or the lack of one, told me a lot.”
Having run businesses for two decades, he wasn’t trying to learn how a neural network works. “I wanted to understand what AI actually meant for how companies should think and act.”
One distinction from the programme has stayed with him ever since: the difference between what a technology can do and where it should actually be used.
“Too much of the tech industry falls in love with a new capability first and goes hunting for a problem to justify it afterward. I’ve always tried to run that the other way: start with a real business plan, then decide if AI, or anything else, is the right tool for it.”
He says the bigger gift from the course was the pause it offered. “Running a company means there’s always a fire somewhere demanding your attention. Sitting in a classroom for a few weeks, away from the day-to-day, forces a different kind of thinking. Slower, more structural.”
The MIT experience also got him interested in continuing to learn in a structured, classroom setting. It led to short, onsite courses at Harvard focused on business strategy and at Wharton on finance.
“None of these are things I need for a credential at this stage of my career. I do them because learning should never stop.”
From Jaipur and Delhi to Indore
Born in Jaipur, Piyush spent his formative years in Delhi, where he completed his schooling at Don Bosco.
“Growing up, business wasn’t really the conversation at our dinner table. My father was a senior executive in a steel-related business, so we grew up around that corporate, salaried world rather than an entrepreneurial one,” recalls Piyush. He topped his class in Class 10.
For college, he moved to Indore to pursue a B.Com while studying for his Chartered Accountancy qualification. It was his first real lesson in juggling commitments.
“I also added a qualification in information systems from ICAI, because even then I was more curious about what technology could do for a business than about accounting for its own sake,” says Piyush, who also holds an honours degree in Systems Management from the National Institute of Information Technology.
Angel investing and a global network
Piyush invests directly in early-stage companies as an angel investor and mentors individual founders. He has also broadened how he deploys capital, investing through private equity, venture capital and seed-stage funds alongside direct investments in growth-stage companies.
He says this gives him a wider view of how entire industries are evolving, rather than just one company at a time.
“It puts me in rooms with sharp investors, founders and operators I’d never otherwise meet,” says Piyush, pointing out that some of the best ideas he has come across in recent years have emerged through these interactions.
He believes early-stage founders need perspective from someone who has already made mistakes and can help them see beyond the immediate challenges they are facing.
“I remember exactly how lonely those early years of building something can be. If I can shorten that road for someone else even a little, I try to.”
Piyush has been named a Titan 100 honouree in Chicago twice. What he values most about the recognition has less to do with the trophy and more to do with the people it brings together.
“It isn’t siloed by industry, so you’re sitting alongside people building manufacturing companies, healthcare systems, professional services firms, and plenty of others you’d never cross paths with in a normal week.”
He is also part of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) in Chicago.
“Beyond just being a cohort of other entrepreneurs, it’s a forum where you can actually say the things you can’t say anywhere else,” says Piyush, adding that EO has also given him genuine global friendships.
Through the organisation, he has travelled to Greece, Singapore, South Africa, Thailand and Germany, among other places, and met fellow EO members. “Those relationships have stuck.”
The road ahead
“We’re in one of the more genuinely interesting stretches this industry has seen,” says Piyush, pointing out that AI, particularly agentic AI, is moving out of the pilot stage and into production in ways that felt theoretical even two years ago.
Many organisations are still experimenting without a governance model to match. Piyush believes that gap is where a technology partner like Beyond Key can add value.
Outside work, golf is Piyush’s reset button. “I also just genuinely like discovering new places, finding a good restaurant I hadn’t heard of, and being around people and ideas outside my usual bubble,” says the CEO, who travels regularly across continents for work.
“There’s still a lot to build, and with everything happening in this industry right now, no shortage of reasons to stay curious.”
- Follow Piyush Goel on LinkedIn