Raghu Mohan

A business based on missed calls?

Well, for anyone who’d start something like that, most people would have said, ‘good luck’. But when Valerie Wagoner, Amiya Pathak and Sanjay Swami started brainstorming about the idea, they felt a huge potential in this market, which was untapped. Four years on, with a clientele which includes Disney, Gillette, Unilever, and P&G, and a million dollars in revenue last year alone, the ZipDial team is scaling rapidly and are one of the most promising companies to emerge from sub-continent in recent times.

But what does an engineer do at such a company? We spoke to the head of marketing of ZipDial, Mr. Shantanu Deshmukh, who took us through the prominent engineers who have played an important role in the company’s growth so far. Here are some edited excerpts from our conversation with him.

HE: It has been a prolific four years for you guys at ZipDial. What would you say the main focus of the ZipDial team has been in this time and how has that translated to the products you’ve launched?

ZD: Innovation and execution have been the focus for the ZipDial team. The business model which ZipDial invented nearly 4 years ago—missed call marketing—today has transformed into a comprehensive suite of mobile marketing and analytics solutions. And our product innovations like re-targeting over SMS, friend referrals, and Twitter fast-follow are the testimony to the culture of innovation that we foster.

HE: What would you say is the attitude of a successful engineer at ZipDial? What makes an engineer succeed at ZipDial?

ZD: Customer empathy, collaboration, getting into the depths of things, idea generation, YES attitude to roll up sleeves and getting things done. Not giving up easily is an important trait that we look for.

HE: What keeps great engineers at ZipDial? Why do they continue to work for you?

ZD: Our clients, who are some of the biggest brands around the world, come to us with lots of innovative requirements. Every advertising campaign comes up with its own challenge. These things keep our guys busy and excited about their days at ZipDial. Besides that, the young team ensures that the atmosphere remains fun-filled.

HE: What is the average day of a coder at ZipDial?

ZD: As the company is growing and expanding internationally, engineers are busy with newer innovations that company is looking to bring to the market. The day is filled with building new things, understanding new campaign flows, brainstorming and getting things done. And an engineer’s measure of success is when sales team reports back that the clients are happy about the campaign's successful implementation.

HE: What do you do for fun at ZipDial?

ZD: The atmosphere is relaxing with friendly co-workers. We lunch together, celebrate birthdays, play TT, hang out over chai, go out for team lunches and more when the bosses are not around! On Friday Founder and COO, Amiya Pathak often takes the lead in asking folks to get off their seats and join for beer.

HE: Do you do anything special for a new recruit? How long does it take for them to settle into the new job and what do you do to make them feel at home?

ZD: Each new recruit goes through a short orientation to understand the business of ZipDial. The founders ensure that the new member gels well with her team and the leader.

To make employees "feel at home", we literally operate out of a spacious home in Koramangala—an upmarket locality in Bangalore. And from what we’ve seen so far, they settle as quickly as the foam over beer! We are also taking a poll using ZipDial to decide whether to domesticate an Indian or African elephant to welcome a new recruit :)

HE: What is the unique thing about working at ZipDial?

ZD: You are likely to work on what you’re good at. And occasionally, you can even bring your dog to the office. :)

HE: In one line, what is the culture of ZipDial and what makes it an awesome place to work?

ZD: I think it is a great chance for young innovators to take an Indian start-up global. And working at ZipDial gives you an opportunity to be a part of that story.

The most practical times to start up is either before you have children and after they’ve left home. However, in the past few years or so, we’ve seen quite a few middle aged people leave their cushy, high paying jobs to start their own companies. The risks are much higher - you probably have children by now and you have a few significant mortgages to close as well and a steady income keeps them at bay.

But there’s another argument, that because the stakes are so high, businesses started by these middle aged ones are probably more well thought out and have a better chance to succeed. There are no numbers that we have to validate this claim, but we know for a fact, that Girish Mathrubootham and his company Freshdesk definitely do so. (Read their whole story here)

Started in 2011, the company currently houses over a 150 employees and is one of the fastest growing solutions provider of customer support solutions in the SaaS space. It is one of the most sought after companies to work for in the startup space in India and the company is also hiring quite prolifically.

But what is it like to work at Freshdesk? What is its culture? And what are you up for when you go to work with them? We got Freshdesk’s founder, Girish, in a very candid interview to answer all these questions and more.

Read on -

HE: When you started Freshdesk, did you have a culture of some sort in mind? Or were you too busy getting things started up?

Girish: Even before starting Freshdesk I have run large successful Product teams and I always focus on a simple aspect - Everyone deserves a Happy Work environment. For me it's always "Relationships first, Work Next". I believe that building products is like running a marathon and not a 100m dash. So you have to have a team that can go on and on and on for years together winning, laughing and crying together. Also I believe that life is too short to be dealing with jerks - so we try hard not to be one.

HE: Was starting up in Chennai difficult? Were there any challenges you faced because Freshdesk was based out of Chennai?

Girish: I have never felt that. Chennai is where I first tasted success in life and it continues to pull me back (I moved to the US twice and came back on both occasions. We almost moved to Bangalore and dropped the plan at the last minute.) It is almost as if "I love this city and it loves me back even more."

So I think we are happy and proud to be a Chennai Startup.

HE: You've spent a lot of time in Zoho, whose culture a lot of people speak very highly of. How much of that rubbed off on you and did you carry that over to Freshdesk?

Girish: I have spent close to ten years at Zoho and I love and respect the culture at Zoho. (To put that in context - I changed four jobs in four years and I spent 10 years at Zoho) I would definitely agree that I have learnt a lot about building teams and culture at Zoho and you will find a lot of cultural similarities. We have also improved on some aspects which we have evolved internally at Freshdesk.

HE: What are the top 4 ideals that you live by at Freshdesk?

Girish:

1. Everyone deserves a Happy work environment
2. By default trust (everyone)
3. Relationships first, Work next
4. Learning by doing is best way of learning (No classroom trainings)

HE: What is the attitude of coders who have been successful at Freshdesk?

Girish: Our successful coders are like nerds everywhere. They are mostly silent and introverted. They are brilliant in their code. They like playing with their tech toys (think Raspberry Pis or Linux boxes or the Philips Hue lights). They let their work speak for themselves and their pays are really skewed and higher when compared to others with similar experience.

In other words, we are an engineering driven company and understand the value of good engineers.

HE: How important is academic background at Freshdesk?

Girish: We don't worry about fancy universities or degrees. We have someone who hasn't yet finished engineering. We also have an MBA from Carnegie Mellon.

HE: What do you do for fun at Freshdesk?

Girish: We play foosball. We had our Freshdesk Foosball championship where my team lost in the semifinals. We work. (Seriously, at least for a lot of us, work at Freshdesk is a lot of fun. But I know that you won't believe me and that's ok)

We also run internal hackathons. Our marketing team once asked "Why should developers have all the fun?" and then we had the world's first marketing hackathon (internally). We have a cricket team called the Freshdesk Falcons who won a local tournament two months ago. Our Product manager is also a DJ who likes to keep us on our feet at company parties.

HE: What's the experience of a new hire at Freshdesk? How do you get them to feel at home?

Girish: We don't do anything special. We are growing fast but we are organized into smaller teams. So I think the friendly small team first absorbs the new hire and then the other interactions happen during lunch, coffee or company events. We also have recently started our company Intranet and we hope our people will start conversing there.

HE: Culture wise, what are 3 red flags which signal a bad hire?

Girish:

1. Whining / Cribbing
2. Lack of ownership
3. Spreading negativity

HE: In one line, what is Freshdesk's culture?

Girish: This was really tough to answer. So we did a quick hallway poll asking each person to tell us in one line what they really liked about working at Freshdesk. The almost unanimous answer was "Operational Freedom and a fun work environment"

Freshdesk is bound to go places and they’re still a fun, startup-y environment to work for. Want a beach side view as you work for one of the most exciting SaaS companies in the world?

Check this out

I was speaking with a professor at a university, which had an abysmal placement record. It was a touchy topic but I had to know what he thought were the reasons for a lack of placement. However, he seemed pretty unapologetic about it. He said, “It is an academic degree. What makes you think that it will guarantee you a job? Once you’re done with a bachelors degree, you should go on to work on masters degree and then a PhD. That is the natural progression of an academic degree, and not a job. If you want a job, get a vocational degree.”

I have never thought of an academic degree like this. No wonder you don’t even use a fraction of what you study at college at work. Because what you study, was probably NEVER meant to be of direct relevance to a job. In fact, if you stop as a graduate or a postgraduate, you’ve still dropped out of education, as you’ve not completed the whole academic progression! (technically, at least)

As a part of my previous job, I had the privilege of interviewing Sridhar Vembu, the founder of Zoho. Of the many things that he’s renowned for, his education program aimed at kids at polytechnic colleges and dropouts has been the stuff of folklore. When asked about the thought behind the motive, he said -

“See, there are many colleges in India that really don’t teach much. Even if they teach well, there is a disconnect between what they learn and what is really needed in today’s world. Most colleges in India are atrocious and there is not much going on in them. Most students waste time; they study for exams and are really not aware of the reality outside. Going to college and education are not coincidental. You spend 4 years in college and you might have learnt something incidentally.”

“There is a general complaint about college students in India by their employers and so every company has a training scheme of their own. But all of them wait for the students to finish their four years of college, which I think is a waste of time. What we have done is gone further and get them before this wasted time period.”

It seems like the rest of the world has started to come to terms with this as well. We know for a fact, through the Coding Challenges on HackerEarth, that there are many top techies in India, who haven’t completed their college education. Of course, many of them are from the premier institutions as well, but the point is, when it comes to a technical job, the place where you graduated from, hardly matters.

And the companies are seeing it too. There have been enough engineers over the years, who have got into companies like Google, without a college degree. In fact, earlier this year, Google revealed that they have started hiring people who have never been to college. Google’s VP for People Operations, Lazlo Bock, said, “After two or three years, your ability to perform at Google is completely unrelated to how you performed when you were in school, because the skills you required in college are very different. You’re also fundamentally a different person. You learn and grow, you think about things differently.”

“Another reason is that I think academic environments are artificial environments. People who succeed there are sort of finely trained, they’re conditioned to succeed in that environment. One of my own frustrations when I was in college and grad school is that you knew the professor was looking for a specific answer. You could figure that out, but it’s much more interesting to solve problems where there isn’t an obvious answer. You want people who like figuring out stuff where there is no obvious answer. “ In fact, if you’re a programmer, here’s a post that can help you understand how you really don’t need a college degree to crack the coveted job offer.

But coming back the the insight from the professor; will the system change? I don’t know. But if you’ve got good skills (as a programmer or anything else for that matter), and no college degree, do you have a chance of getting a job?

Hell yes.