I worked with all my heart, it might sound a bit cliche, but it's true! Whenever you put your heart into something you will figure out a way to make things work.
1. Tell us about your background, journey and upbringing.
I am an authentic Delhiite. My schooling, graduation, as well as post-graduation, also have been from Delhi. Both my parents belong to a generation where job security and pension were the only dreams of any Indian. My mom is a retired Yoga TGT of a govt school in Central Delhi and my dad a retired banker from the famous Punjab & Sind Bank. During my schooling days in New Era Mayapuri, I always thought that I was one of the few Sikh kids whose parents had such a rare combination of jobs, but my belief was broken when I started my graduation in GTBIT, IP University, Hari Nagar.
I had never seen so many Sikh youngsters together in any institution and to my surprise, every 3rd student had parents with the same combination of jobs. I had never planned to study engineering, in fact, I never had a clear mindset about my future self (again the most common kind of struggle every teenager goes through) but even after opting for medical stream in school, I had resolved to the most convenient graduation degree. Later, after my 3 years with Infosys, I decided to change my career when I pursued my regular MBA from LBSIM in Dwarka, Delhi in 2015.
I have had a very pleasant life and my parents never ever made me or my elder brother miss out on any essential elements, be it fun or learning. Our parents, especially our mother, always pushed us to get good grades throughout college. She even created a daily timetable for study, tv and playing hours to help us lead a balanced life, but that never stopped me from being mischievous during study hours. My brother & I always had a knack for outdoor activities, we used to play cricket or volleyball in our neighbourhood park almost daily. I even won a lot of inter-gully tournaments in Cricket and volleyball. Played almost every famous TV video game in the 90s with my favourite one being "Snow Bros".
I hail out of Rajouri Garden, the heart of West Delhi District. It's been 32 years now in this ever blooming neighbourhood and very recently I got into a permanent lockdown in Dec'20 with my wife who is a Network Engineer at a leading investment bank. Till date, I live in a joint family with my wife, parents and elder brother, sister in law and nephew.
2. How did you rise to the highest echelons in your career?
My career started in 2010 with campus placement at Infosys. The starting 4 months were just like college as 100 engineers of IP university from our batch were finally selected. The only change was that we were on one of the world's best campuses, Infosys Mysore. It was an independent city situated a little far from Mysore city; spread across 280 acres of lush green land with 100 boys & girls hostels, 4 GEC (Global Educations Centers), 7 cafeterias, a 1000 seater auditorium and an amazing ECC (employee care centre).
During my time there I witnessed the perks of working with one of the biggest MNCs of India, the best workplace & office amenities. It was after those 4 months of training when I was posted to the Hyderabad campus, I stepped into the real world. Although I was on a bench in the initial year of my employment but after taking a transfer to Chandigarh I worked for 2 years on two different bank projects. Since I have an extrovert personality I was able to understand that career progression in IT can be done in two ways, either getting into a project with a small team size and high onsite requirements or just moving at a gradual pace including company switching. The former option was nowhere to be seen in the near future and I wasn't patient enough for the latter; so I decided with a group of friends/colleagues to pursue higher education and completed a regular MBA in 2015.
I got a campus placement in HCL Infosystems as an area sales manager where during my short tenure I realized how conventional sales works, how a slow-moving product only requires push marketing. I could actually link all the theoretical knowledge to the business model and started applying the concepts of product placement, customer waiting time, store branding and more in my daily market visits. I had 3 direct reportees who handled 3 different distributors in tier 2 and 3 markets of Haryana. I was only moving up in my learning curve when due to my mother's health I had to move back immediately to New Delhi.
Here, I got an opportunity with Cars24, an automotive startup, which had just started its operations in 2015 in Delhi/NCR. I was appointed as their first Retail Manager at their first store in Golf Course Extension in Gurugram. Although entering into a startup had its own risks in terms of job security, I embarked on this journey in the hope to learn a lot from the uncertainties bound to happen ahead. Now it's been 6 years with Cars24, we are a unicorn and parallelly I have grown to a National Sales Manager managing the whole C2B sales vertical.
There were two major reasons for my success:
I willingly chose the hard path, leaving an MNC and joining a startup, hence whatever results I achieved were always winning (learning) for me, and
I worked with all my heart, it might sound a bit cliche, but it's true! Whenever you put your heart into something you will figure out a way to make things work.
3. What does your typical workday look like?
Till date, I work in a startup and it's not a normal 9 to 5 job, and the pandemic has diminished the timelines between personal and professional worlds with the WFH format. I wake up around 8 am, work out till 9 and start my day around 9:30 am. My week is pretty much already pre-planned with weekly regional business review calls scheduled from Tuesday to Friday, and Mondays I have my own reviews.
Apart from that, I keep a few hours every week for business analysis, that way I am able to come up with different pilots to increase business. Lastly, I handle city head queries related to business issues and depending upon the criticality and frequency of those issues, either solve them permanently via the tech team or customer experience team. I wrap my day usually around 7-7:30 PM unless there isn't an urgent call even at later hours.
Google Calendar - to schedule meetings and know how my day looks like.
Google docs - to record my work, review docs and designing pilots.
Due to WFH and to stay fit I workout in the morning before the day starts scrambling.
4. It seems onboarding, even in 2021 is a long drawn out process behind the scenes. How do you envision this changing in the future?
"Onboarding" is an ever-evolving process, be it of new employees or vendors or channel partners. For years before digitization kicked in, it has been a long cumbersome process. Nowadays, every workforce portal has been developed or modified to accommodate the digital uploading of documents. Onboarding should be as convenient and as smooth as possible making it one of the most exciting stages as it is the first step to your association.
The better the onboarding experience the stronger is the connection aka understanding of the organization and eventually lesser is the churn of newly onboarded resources. What I have witnessed in my experience, is that more than 50% of the total churn happens in the initial onboarding phase, either we make the process too complicated or too difficult as a qualifier.
The future of onboarding has already begun with this pandemic via video resumes, digital document uploading, smarter & interactive training modules, on-call or chatbots assistance and much more to come. This is all set for the only purpose of making onboarding simply fascinating. Organizations who get rated as a "Best Workplace" have already understood and started working on improving the onboarding experience. If any organization wants to improve they should always start at level zero.
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5. Several global companies have come out and thrown their support behind not needing a formal education. What is your opinion about this?
Education as we all know is one of the essential activities that every human being should receive. We have created a systematic approach of imparting education via formal institutions like schools and colleges that follow a fixed curriculum. But is it true that if we receive education via formalized institutions then only we are bound to succeed in life?
I don't think so. We have a lot of examples in the real world such as Albert Einstein, Dhirubhai Ambani and many more who did not meet the standards of formal education but have created their footprints in history via their success stories. Education is an enlightening experience that starts from the day we were born, the way our senses adapt to the surroundings to leanings in our day to day lives.
An individual's experience transcends far beyond the dimensions of formal education. In fact, by the time you complete your formal education and get your first job you do not even know how to apply or use most of the subjects that you have studied.
It is your day to day experience that develops or refines your skills. Nowadays age is no longer a delimiter for anyone to start working. The tough coding skills which we started learning after the 10th standard has started for kids in the 4th and 5th standard depending on their interest level. Global companies have realized this fact - education over experience and using this they can tap into much more potential by removing the formal education barrier.
6. What is the best piece of advice you would like to give to those who want to rise in their careers in the corporate world?
Problem Solver - They are looking for someone who doesn't ask questions but provides solutions to them.
Analytical Thinking - Try reading between the lines, break bigger problems into smaller simpler ones and analyze them at the micro-level to develop a better understanding.
Structure yourself - People who are at the top have already figured out how to manage themselves better. The toughest thing is discipline and once you are able to apply that you have already won half the battle.
Lead by Example - If you aspire to become something, then don't wait for your turn. People who want to bring a good change start by doing it themselves and inspire others in the process.
7. How are things changing in your domain, what role will data and information play in the future?
Working in the automotive domain for now 6 years and I have seen some major transformations all led by the technological development of automating the business. For any business to be self-sustainable it has to become adaptable to the changing demands of its consumers and for that, it needs to be fed with data and information.
In my domain as well even the employee in the customer-facing role is taught how data is to be used for better results. Every employee needs to have data access tailored to what their role requires; a basis that only can people and systems become self-sustainable. The future is in automation of redundant essential steps, development of AI systems and making employees more independent; for all this data and information have the most pivotal role to play.
8. Which is your favourite book and why?
To be honest, I am not an avid book reader but I do indulge in reading a lot of small articles that are short and more focused to the point. One of my favourite articles I recently read was on "Regret Minimization Framework" shared by Jeff Bezos. It helps you with better decision making by helping you understand how important it is for you, whether you will feel regret in future if you do not move forward with a decision.
I also indulge in reading via visual modes, i.e. watching movies based on real-life stories, made on famous novels and documentaries.
Interviewed by - Bhavana N
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1 Comments
Keep it up!! Long way to go :)
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