The gender profile of Orix Geoscience Inc. inevitably summons up memories of the television series Charlie’s Angels, except for one thing.
There is no Charlie at Orix Geoscience calling the shots. The Sudbury and Toronto-based geological services company was cofounded in 2012 by president, owner and principal geologist Shastri Ramnath, along with senior project geologist Ashley Kirwan and project geologist Paige Giddy – all of whom worked together at FNX Mining, since acquired by KGHM International.
Women are a definite majority at Orix Geoscience, but “we don’t go out with the intention of specifically hiring women,” said Ramnath. “Maybe it’s because the three of us are women and we tend to attract female geologists. I guess you could say we’re breaking all the rules.”
Orix Geoscience is unique in more ways than one. Its business model is based on partnering with junior mining companies and working for shares as well as cash.
Running a junior mining company can be challenging, said Ramnath.
“You get a pile of money, you buy the software, you hire people, then you have no money and you have to let the people go until you’re able to raise more money. There’s no consistency.
“Our team comes with computers and software. The idea is we’re there when you need us.”
Geological consulting companies that do 43-101s have to remain independent, but Orix Geoscience doesn’t do resource and reserve estimates, explained Ramnath.
“We work with the geologists inside the team to build the model, so we’re more like employees for hire.”
Working for shares was another departure from the norm, but “I took shares as an employee of FNX, and the stock went from $4 to $39, so I thought, why can’t I work for shares for other companies? Everybody warned us about that, but it’s worked out. It offers juniors who have run out of money some flexibility because they’re caught in a Catch-22.
They need to raise money, but they can’t raise money until they have an idea to articulate and show to investors. Some jobs we do are all shares, but the bigger ones are mostly cash. That’s our model.
“I look at it as an opportunity to help them because I know that when the market changes, they’re going to want to work with the people who treated them well when they fell on hard times. Bay Street can be a tough place when the markets are down.”
Orix Geoscience specializes in large datasets with thousands of drill holes, scanning, cataloguing, organizing and interpreting large volumes of data, digitizing drill hole logs and producing 3-D models.
Ramnath made the transition from a salaried geologist to an entrepreneur midway through an MBA program while still working for QuadraFNX.
It was a course called Entrepreneurial and Visionary Thinking that changed her life and encouraged her to start her own company.
“I tracked down a company in Toronto and went in and said, ‘I’m starting a new business. Would you be interested in my geological services?’
They said, ‘No, but we’d like you to be our CEO.’ I said, ‘I’m not a CEO,’ even though I wanted to be. I wasn’t ready. Two months later they called me and said they’d train me, so I thought, what the heck. I’m up for an adventure.”
The company, Bridgeport Ventures, had $8 million in the bank and a project in Chile. Ramnath moved to Toronto and ran the company for two years, raising $17.5 million and acquiring 10 projects in Nevada.
“In 2011, when the markets started to crash, we went into conservation mode,” she said. “A lot of companies were very devalued and you could buy ounces cheaper than you could discover them.
“In 2012, Bridgeport Ventures merged with Premier Royalty. I stepped down as CEO and started Orix Geoscience.”
Ashley Kirwan and Paige Giddy, who had joined her at Bridgeport, went along for the ride.
“Our first client, Roxgold Inc., was the best performing stock on the TSX-Venture exchange in 2012 and had a new discovery in Burkina Faso. The CEO gave us 20 minutes at the end of his day to show him what we could do for him. He listened to our story and said, ‘Ya. I could use your help.’”
Another important client came aboard when TMAC Resources, led by the old FNX team of Terry MacGibbon, Catherine Farrow, Gord Morrison and Dave King, acquired the Hope Bay gold project in Nunavut.
2012 wasn’t the best time to start a geological services company, but business is brisk, and will only get better when the exploration industry begins to rebound.
Expertise accounts for much of Orix Geosciene’s success, but equally important, according to Ramnath, is another fundamental part of the company’s business model. In her words, “We’re nice people to work with.”
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