Saurabh Gupta

Phonethics is a Digital Media company
with expertise in Social Media & Mobile Apps. We were founded in 2006 when
we switched over from our earlier avatar of a short form content production
company. 

It’s not for the weak hearted. The
joys of entrepreneurship in india are underwhelming specially since the overall
infrastructure is crumbling. You cannot provide safe transport for your
employees in Mumbai, its not possible to ensure working days due to festivals,
flooding and random bandhs. If you can live with this and many other downsides
including perhaps a delayed financial reward, start up, else, find a job. On
management, I see people around me who work late, meet their kids on weekends
and generally burn the candle at both ends. I don’t see the value in this. My
team leaves office at 6. I spend time reading, travelling and playing with my
kids and get the chance to dabble in a few other ideas that people around me
are exploring. Spare bandwidth is essential. If you don’t have it as a leader,
it’s a systemic problem. Find better teams and reduce your pace. 

Airtel. Everything about their
management style, customer focus, business model is admirable. I am also a big
fan of working with partners to build something big. This is something that
Airtel has proven with its unique biz model. 

We pitched short form content to
telcos and showed them stuff they’d never seen before. The wow factor was
enough for three major telcos to sign us up. The biggest lesson was that while
we closed the ‘sale’ the revenue visibility and transparency was not there. So
in a sense you can chase some big brand names as clients but usually theyre not
the best paymasters. The client acquisition in the beginning should be as much
about revenue as strategic importance. Otherwise there is a false sense that
we’re selling something and closing deals while nothing is hitting the bank. 

As a creative guy and a
communications entrepreneur I am deeply interested in how people understand and
use digital products. This is even more complex in the context of the Indian
society. We’re constantly challenged by this opportunity to build something
that can be understood without using language or instructions. If you see one
of our web content pieces we created a fun instruction video that doesn’t use
any dialogue but outlines the proposition very clearly. People just get it.
That is the main difficulty. 

I’d build a management team and a
board fairly early and probably institute a revenue stream right from the
start. Sales heals all. 

I am still the Creative Anchor and
soulkeeper for the teams. My understanding of creativity and its expression has
expanded to interactive media. I read like a maniac. I read on a kindle, my
ipad, my phone, in the car everywhere, so I’m contantly discovering new things
and then the ones I think are closer to my domain, I go after them till I know
more. This is important. As an informed leader you could be performing the same
function but the form will evolve. 

Creating new things. Blending tech
and creative abilities and tools to create things that didn’t exist motivates
me. The desire to ‘make a dent in the universe’ drives me. 

I’ve rebuilt my team from scratch.
And I’ve found that loyalty and familiarity are overrated and in fact dangerous.
What motivates people is clarity about their roles, clear career path and
honesty from the leader. And if you’re sending people into battle be prepared
to lead the charge. Nothing gets people fired up like seeing you draw blood. I
take sales, tech, product, client meets and almost always ask teams to turn
over their worst suppliers and clients to me. And Empathy. On the advice of a
friend I’ve scaled back the aggression a bit and started to empathise with the
troops. Sometimes it works. 

Merit is the only criteria that draws
me to a person. Now we have detailed tests and three rounds of interviews to
select people. I find that honesty and ability to stand shoulder to shoulder
and take the heat builds the team. 

Internal risks such as a sense of
Hubris and Inertia are taken care of by constantly innovating and challenging
myself and the team. We have constantly exposed ourselves to new aspects of the
digital universe ranging from the mundane like a fresh approach to designing
lead management systems to Gamification and game design. There is a constant
market risk that as a small, independent player, a bigger agency or tech
company will eat our lunch. We’ve been able to move the ball constantly by
blending Creative design and Technology. As an enterprise the biggest risk we
face today is ‘scale’. I’ve personally always treated ‘scale’ as a double edged
sword. Grow too fast and you’re spread too thin [resource challenged] and don’t
grow fast enough and you risk being the frog in the well. At the moment we’re
trying to balance out adding new skills with expanding to new geographies.
We’ve expanded our market to the US right now and will evaluate a new office
later this year. 

Great. We’ve only ever pitched once
to raise a small round of angel and we closed it in 6 weeks. 

Its not possible to anticipate how
everything will turn out and I find this crystal ball gazing a vain and
stressful affair. I’m willing to make mistakes and take risks. That’s why I run
an enterprise. Connecting the right dots is about hard work and leveraging the
right opportunities and not some prescient paranormal skill that people can
inculcate. 

Play. As hard as you work.