"It's Very Important To Love The People Who Work Around Us" Value based entrepreneurs can create great place to work.
By Sunil Pol
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The digital marketing space that conveys the message in the creative way is largely driven by the constant creativity, innovations and discoveries. Thus happy and value based environment encourage employees to think innovative ideas.
According to India Brand Equity Foundation in India the online advertising marketing has evolved from small-scaled business to full-fledged Rs 3,575cr industry in the last five to seven years of time with the compound annual rate of 28 per cent. It is projected to be the fasted growing advertising market in Asia after China.
Understanding the pulse of the creativity while marking its niche in the industry differently Gozoop, independent digital agency has successfully built a creative yet happy work culture driven by values rather than just profits.
Startup was founded by two young minds, Ahmed Naqvi and Rohan Bhansali in 2010. "A lot of entrepreneurs think that to build a great culture you require money. They think of how to balance between profitability and building a happy value based company", said Ahmed Naqvi, Co-founder, Gozoop.
Large numbers of entrepreneurs operating in the digital marketing space are profit driven. They are heavily investing on hiring talented people, putting in place best processes and adopting advance technology. But very few entrepreneurs are investing on the people with values as humility, honesty, loyalty, integrity and commitment which is the secret sauce of the successive company.
"We really believe that it's not about money it's about your attitude, what you pretend towards you employees that goes in building better and happy company", said Rohan Bhansali, Co-founder, Gozoop.
It is not easy for every entrepreneur to keep up with the company values while scaling up. The entrepreneurs fail to put conscious effort towards maintaining the happy and value based culture. Therefore slowly and steadily employee friendly values get replaced by the profit driven values stemmed by the intensified competition to acquire larger market share.
"It's very important to love the people we work around. We had decided whatever we will do we will keep our team happy and that was the broader understanding. Our core thinking was lets be driven by values and profit will be the bi- product. Our objective in the end is not to be the largest company but the happy company", said Ahmed.
"It is necessary for entrepreneurs to have a right balance. They should always be ahead of the curve. Initially after hiring 20-30 people we hired happiness officers who were actually a HR team. The mandate was to make sure that our team found meaning in the work and is happy with the work. And If you just focus on values and not profitability then that values wouldn't be sustained and vice-a-versa", said Bhansali.
In the growing journey it is also important for an entrepreneur to unlearn a lot of things to match the creativity of new breed of employees that they are bringing with the changing times and dynamics of the industry.
"Unlearning is very important. Every year the generation changes with which you have to unlearn a lot of things. The entrepreneurs should be agile and cognisant to how the generation going to best react to a certain value system. At the same it is important to not lose your value system", said Bhansali.
However the Indian Digital marketing industry is growing to its true potential in-line with global industry. It is becoming extremely important for the entrepreneurs to remain true to their values while making sure that every employee finding meaning in their work and feels belonged to the company. For employees the growth should not be just professional but also the personal.