STARTUP
SPECIAL
HOW I BUILT MY
TEAM
Corporate
Dossier quizzes startup founders on lessons learnt and
mistakes made while putting together their
A-Team
VIJAY
SHEKHAR SHARMA Founder, One 97 and Paytm
“In
2011, I decided to do some thing in the smartphone space because the
payments business was taking off. I was in
New York and I had a friend there
-a classmate with whom I had started my
first company.He was working with
Blackberry (formerly Research In Motion) in
Canada and had come to
me
in New York. We were roaming around a park in New York and I was
talking
to him about the rising mobile phone penetration in India and the
prospects of starting a payments business.
Both
of us had studied in Delhi and he always had a problem with people
asking for change (smaller denominations of
money). He had a complaint
that people in India don't usually return
the money due to you because of lack
of change with them. He asked me if I can do
something about it. I told him
that there are two issues we need to solve.
One is that the app developers
and game developers don't get small amounts
because there are no payment
options at present. The other is, the
transactions that happen daily with a
rickshaw driver or in kirana shop.How do we
make all this digital?
He bought into it and that is how I made my first hire--Harinder Takhar
(now
CEO of Paytm Labs).He came to India towards the end of 2011 and
I told him to meet investors then. That was
the formal beginning of Paytm.
Then
there was Renu Satti, who was from a human resources background.
She
used to be my teammate. She wanted to do something different and
I
wanted someone who was fully involved and ready to do new things.
I asked her if she wanted to really get into
business (operations), because
I knew there will be tough times ahead. I
told her we are going to start
a
new segment in ecommerce and I want her on my side. These two team
mates
made my core team.
We
also had a technology guy, who left us in due course -our first product
manager, Abhishek Rajan. He was my junior at
the Delhi School
of
Engineering and I had known him for a long time. All this happened
between
September 2011 and December 2011.
It
worked out fine for me. They were super capable in their verticals,
even
though they hadn't previously worked in a startup environment.
In
fact, Rajan was the one who coined the name Paytm (pay through mobile)
.Satti,
who was an HR person was heading online marketing and social
media
for us. The work four of us did in the first five months made a
strong
foundation for the company.“
REVANT
BHATE Co-founder, Faasos
“None
of us founders were from the food in dustry. The only thing we knew
about food was to taste how it is. So, we
were looking for someone
who
was from the food industry. We hired a couple of people for that
but
it didn't work out well for us. They came in with preconceived notions
of how a food business should be run and
scaled up. We wanted to do
things differently. The only food players
who had scale were a McDonald's
or a Domino's--western cuisine which was not
really palatble for the Indian
consumer. After the initial couple of hires,
we realised that we wanted to
change
the game. Both these hires were from MNC food giants. One was
working
on operations and the other on supply chain. Most of the bigger
players
have a standardised way of operating the supply chain. That limited
the
food options that one can provide.We wanted to supply fresh Indian
food which consumers can have every day.
That is when we realised we
wanted
to do things our own way.
The
senior management and the second tier at Faasos are not people from
the food industry but mostly entrepreneurs
who wanted to build something
different on their own and are willing to
take a risk. Jaydeep (Barman),
my
cofounder had put out an interesting emailer (for hiring) which got
more
than 2000 responses. It said we neither wanted anyone from the
food
industry nor who makes presentations before us. It clearly said that
the candidates should not send CVs to us,
but just a couple of lines on why
they want to join Faasos. But 50% of the
applicants still sent their CVs and
we
rejected all of them.
In
a startup environment, there is no clear structure or process. You are given
real life problems and you solve it. Jaydeep
and I recruited six people. In the
last one year those six have recruited their
own teams and they have also
gone
about the same way, where experience in a particular function was
not
so important as the willingness to do things differently.
Most
of the top management have ESOPs in the business. We are introducing
ESOP schemes for the second line as well.
That is the draw. Nobody is
going
to put in that much blood and sweat otherwise. They should have
a feeling that it is their own business.“
“Outside of Pankaj (Chaddah)
and
I, Gunjan Patidar (CTO) was the first person to come work full time
on
Zomato. We were referred to Gunjan by an intern who knew him
through
college. When he came in to meet us, he was wearing a T-shirt
that said `will code for food'. We knew we
had the right guy.
I
guess back then we were looking for someone who was passionate
about
tech and wanted to write good code. We reached out to our old
teammates,
classmates, friends and alumni networks. We were very
fortunate
to get the right set of people on board in the early days.
We
grew the team very slowly up until 2011, which is when we started
picking a slight pace in hiring and for the
last two years have been
consistently
doubling in size. There are over 3000 of us across 22 countries
and it feels like such a short time ago when
we were in just eight cities
in India.
When
we started out our first mission was to build the most exhaustive
database
of restaurants in the Delhi NCR region. I think in the early days
raising
funds was one of the bigger challenges and as we grow and scale up,
attracting and retaining the right people is
an ongoing challenge.
We
have, however, been very lucky to have the right kind of investors
on
board. We have also built a fantastic team of over 3000 people across
22 countries and are really looking forward
to what the rest of the year
has in store for us.
Every
country has its own culture and it is difficult to replicate similar
cultures
across several countries. However, we have realised that if we
look hard and invest enough time to find
folks who are passionate about
the
product, we will find them. It does take time but we always find the
right
fit for the organisation. If you walk into any of the Zomato offices
across
22 countries, you will find a similar passion and vibe in the office.
Till
about a year ago, I was fairly hands-on in the hiring process.
Over
the last 9 12 months we have built a healthy layer of business owners
and recruiters who are just as passionate
about Zomato and are helping
Zomato
grow at a much faster pace.“
“When
I started out in 2001, no one wanted to join an internet company,
especially after the dot com bust. An
internet startup wanted people like
product
managers and designers, but there was very little talent available
in
the country.There was very little to choose from and whoever was left
wanted a safe job after 2001. So, until
2006, our hiring policy was `if you
are willing to join us we will hire you.' I
didn't have much of a choice.
Once
we raised external funding we were mostly relying on referrals and
a little help from head hunters from around
2007 to 2010. Many of our
top
guys have joined us in different roles and moved to other roles and
grown
with the company.
A
journalist had come to interview me, I turned it around into a job offer.
He
turned out to be a good product manager for us. And I turned a business
development guy to be my PR person. We have
taken a consultant and
turned him into an online marketing head, we
have taken a CFO and made
him into a CEO, turned an HR person into a
market development head.
We
do this quite a bit. We don't box people. If someone wants to try
something
different, we are for it. There were three office attendants with us
and two of them are web engineers now. So,
we are always challenging
people
to expand their horizons. But you wouldn't want to make a finance
guy
your CTO.
We
didn't have much money to pay our employees initially. I was trying
to
sell a dream to them. There were some people who you could connect
with. Those days nobody knew what an ESOP
is. Everyone wanted cash.
When
you are hiring someone, they should basically understand the culture
of your organisation. That doesn't mean that
they should have the same
views.
You want people with different opinions than yours, or sure.
Two
major things that one should look at are attitude and learn ng agility.
Sometimes, when people have too much
experience, it can be dangerous.
And
when it comes to letting go of people, generally in India, professionals
struggle with it but entrepreneurs don't as
much. I see professionals in my
company hold on to it, when they have to
take tough decisions, for months.
It
damages everything not only the company but that individual's performance
too. It may not be his fault. May be your
environment is not suitable for him.
Sometimes, it is good for him if you let
go.“
|
By
Dearton Thomas Hector
|
CDET
11SEP15
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