Published in Haaretz.com on 07.01.2009 i-rox: Where Zionism, religion, and crisis meet and thrive   By Tali Heruti-Sover   Walking into the offices of i-rox Software Products, you might be forgiven for thinking it's a ghost town. Silence reigns at this company, utter silence. No voices are raised, no phones ring. But the rooms of this company, which develops software for other firms, are manned - by dozens of ultra-Orthodox women, bewigged and seated in front of computers. There is no glittering state-of-the-art high-tech kitchen and nobody takes a leisurely hour-long lunch break. At most they use the glatt kosher microwave oven or eat their sandwich from home sitting in front of their flickering computer screens. The two women behind i-rox are co-CEO Rutie Margalit, 29, an ultra-Orthodox woman from Bnei Brak, and Yehudit Swissa, 44, a secular woman from Shoham who doesn't wear a long skirt. She wears jeans. They founded the company three years ago and parade through the corridors like proud mother hens. These are days of crisis, and most companies are slashing costs wherever they can. Margalit and Swissa feel, on the other hand, that they have found the solution. They have 60 diligent employees who undergo intensive training in programming and who earn 30% less than the going market rate, which makes i-rox particularly competitive. Advertisement "We provide the ideal solution: software development at a high level at low cost," says Swissa. "That is exactly why companies went to India, but we provide the solution right here in Bnei Brak. It's a lot easier to come to us, communication is easier, and beyond the economic facet there's a Zionist element, too. The work remains in Israel." i-rox is a play on the words Internet and Orthodox, and it isn't the first company in Israel to take advantage of ultra-Orthodox women's eagerness to work. Information-technology company Matrix also discovered this resource years before, setting up branches in places such as Beitar Ilit and Modi'in. Matrix chief executive Moti Gutman, a guru in local outsourcing, has often said it's better to employ a local population hitherto absent from the workforce by retraining in programming than to take advantage of cheaper labor overseas (though Matrix has software houses in Asia and Europe as well). Swissa and Margalit, it seems, leaped on the bandwagon less because of ideology than pure business sense. And the market smiled on them. I-rox's turnover in 2008 will be about NIS 8.5 million. The company started with four employees and today has 60. If not for the global economic crisis, the two founders would have expected a meteoric rise in turnover to around NIS 15 million this year. But they aren't afraid to give numbers, perhaps hoping that the grim market conditions will continue to work in their favor. "A client who comes to us doesn't leave until the project is finished and will come again for the next project," says Swissa. "The problem is that most managers aren't aware of the potential to cut costs through us. If we manage to market ourselves a little more aggressively, to gain more exposure, we'll overcome this crisis period big-time." It actually all started 10 years ago when Rutie Margalit, a member of the Gur sect and today mother of three, was retraining from teaching mathematics to computer science at Sivan College. When she finished her studies, she set out to find a job. "It wasn't trivial," Margalit says. "About 80% or 90% of the women who retrain never make use of their skills because they don't want to work for a secular company. I was determined to use my skill." She applied to ECTel, where she met Yehudit Swissa, a senior manager. "I liked her," says Swissa. "Her tests were excellent and I knew she'd do the job, but I ran into a lot of resistance. It isn't easy for an ultra-Orthodox woman to work in a secular company. They said to me, what for, she'll be pregnant all the time, maternity leave all year, with lots of small kids at home, who needs it. But I insisted and it turns out I was right." Six years later, in 2006, Rutie Margalit began to think about opening a company. "I talked with a highly talented friend who finished Sivan with distinction and had the same problem - where to work. There was nowhere, certainly nowhere appropriate near the home. And then I had the idea. I thought that since the work was needed and there was a workforce that would be glad to work for lower than market levels of pay, why not connect the two elements and establish a software house right here in Gush Dan [the greater Tel Aviv area]." Margalit, whose main venue is the technology, knew she couldn't hack it alone. She suggested that Swissa join the effort. Swissa had been blissfully unaware of the problem of jobs for ultra-Orthodox women and the hidden business potential in that environment. "I liked the idea right away because I'd never supported outsourcing to foreign countries," she says. "It always annoyed me that I'd be outsourcing work to Ukraine, for instance. There were a lot of communication difficulties. We needed translators for every conversation. We didn't understand each other and the whole thing was conducted unprofessionally, and wasn't Zionist. In parallel I remembered how hard the fight was to get Rutie accepted to work, and I understood that was a road that many ultra-Orthodox women had to travel." You left a secure workplace for the uncertainties of a world you didn't really know. "I practically didn't think about it at all. The solid business logic behind the idea was clear to me." What about the fact that you're the only secular woman and all the rest are Haredi? "I once asked Rutie if I had to come with a skirt, and she said, 'Of course not.' Each to his own way of life. The only thing I can't do is put my dishes in the microwave. But even if it was okay, I wouldn't have the patience to wait." Margalit and Swissa wrote a business plan and looked for investment, somebody from the ultra-Orthodox community who'd appreciate the concept. With the help of Margalit's husband, they found a businessman willing to put in NIS 4.4 million. Neither Margalit nor Swissa put in a penny of their own, but the work is all theirs. Swissa, who handles sales and marketing, got their first projects from ECTel and "graduates" of that company. "We called, we told them about our new software house, gave at-cost prices and received small projects," she relates. The first four workers, who spent a month in training, began to work. Slowly word of mouth did the trick and jobs began to stream in, though not without bumps in the road. "Clients always ask if men can come to the company," Margalit says. "Of course they can. Our team leaders meet with them and talk with them about work. It can't happen that a man stays alone with a programmer at night, but everything else is perfectly normal." The working conditions are also perfectly normal. Other than on the fast day of Tisha B'Av, the company closes only on Hol Hamo'ed - the intermediate days of a holiday. Employees who excel receive bonuses. According to Margalit and Swissa, work doesn't stretch out to all hours of the evening - because the women are efficient. "That's how women are at all companies, they don't waste time," Swissa quips. Inside a year and a half, i-rox broke even and then started to turn a profit. Margalit is proud to relate that 30 women finished their course in 2006. By now 160 have taken it: they are realizing that there's work out there for them. I-rox itself hires only the ones who excel at their studies but other companies are eager to snap up the rest. The secret of success goes beyond low salaries and high quality products: Management is lean. "We do everything," says Swissa. "There are no needless positions. We hire, manage the technology, marketing, sales, advertising and collection. There's no flab to cut." It all sounds terrific except that a devoted Haredi employee doing exactly the same work as a devoted secular worker is earning 30% less. Margalit and Swissa are unmoved. "The women are happy with what they have and the clients who pay less are happy too," says Swissa. "At the bottom line, everybody wins."