Interview on Greatness Diaries by Ritika Mulchandani.
Rohan Bhansali is the Co-Founder of Gozoop, a global digital services and products company based in India, UAE & Singapore. During his investment banking stint at JPMorgan, Rohan saw an opportunity in the digital space and chased his entrepreneurial dream by starting Raastudios, a web application development company, in 2008. Gozoop acquired Raastudios in October 2010.
Under Rohan’s leadership, Gozoop increased its presence to Dubai in October 2011 & Singapore in May 2013. Gozoop acquired Red Digital in July 2013 and iThink Infotech in July 2014, thus increasing Gozoop’s presence to 7 cities. Today Gozoop is one of the leading providers of digital services and products with clients such as Mumbai Indians, Ferrari, Asian Paints, Dell, High Street Phoenix, Tim Hortons, Mad Over Donuts and Rocket Internet. Gozoop’s business currently consists of 3 verticals – service, products and web properties. Rohan was recently won the coveted Star Youth Achiever Award at the Youth Marketing Awards 2013.
Given below are his thoughts and beliefs about great workplace culture and how an organization can create and sustain a great workplace.
Q1. What, in your view, is the most interesting, comprehensive and simple way of defining a great workplace?
I think a great workplace is best defined as a “home away from home”, where the people have a sense of belongingness and where there are more smiles.
Q2. In a hypothetical conversation back in time, if you were to convince a Slave Owner to stop practicing slavery, and instead, create a great workplaces culture for his people, what would you tell him? What will be your elevator pitch to convince him to change his mind?
I think words wouldn’t work in this case. An actual experience would bring a better understanding. I would make the Slave Owner my slave for a day and force him to complete certain tasks. The next day I would take him through the larger vision on what we are trying to achieve and highlight the importance of his role towards achieving the same.
In this way he would experience both the aspects of treatment and then I would ask him which treatment he preferred and what motivated him to do a better job. This will help him understand that if in the long run if you make people a part of your vision rather than just telling him to do this or that, then that person will not only give his sweat and blood to the work but also his heart.
Q3. In your view, at a fundamental level, what would you say makes people happy at their workplace and what makes people dissatisfied at their workplace?
People are happy when they have a sense belongingness and feel that they are contributing towards something bigger. In a workplace this translates to having the sense that what they are doing is helping the company move towards it mission. On what tends to dissatisfy the people at their workplace, we can simply invert the above – that is not being heard and not being acknowledged.
Q4. If you were to interview and hire various people for an organization using just one question, what would that question be? What are the most important things to assess while hiring someone for an organization?
I would ask – How are you going to contribute to make Gozoop better? I would want to understand his motivation and whether it is beyond just the compensation and the title.
The most important things to assess other than his skill sets and motivations for the job is his character – honesty, integrity and humility.
Q5. What, in your view, makes someone want to do something? What makes people feel inspired towards a goal? If you had to inspire someone to do something, what will you do?
People would want to work towards their goal if they believe in it. I believe that giving the employees the larger vision about what we are trying to do in Gozoop as a whole and why that particular employee’s role is important in that, makes a lot of difference in how that person feel towards his goal. When a person takes ownership of the work, feels that his work is meaningful, and is being acknowledged for that, and is inspired rather than forced to do his work, then it is the best way to get him to work towards his goal.
Q6. What are some of your best lessons on communicating with others – on getting a message across?
Initially I would talk more than I would listen. Overtime I learnt the importance of being a good listener. People love being heard so I try and talk less and understand what the other person has to say. There is this book I read by Dale Carnegie – “How to Win Friends and Influence People”. There this chapter that speacks about the importance of starting a conversation with a “yes”. I swear by it now as a “Yes” sets the right tone of the entire conversation.
Q7. If you could meet someone who works at your organization just once in a year and ask him or her just one question, what would that question be?
It would definitely be – Are you happy and what could we do to make you happier?
Q8. If you could teach just one thing to all the people at your organization, what would that be and what in your view is the best way to teach it?
I think it would be to treat the juniors with respect and I learnt this from my boss at JP Morgan. It kind of trickles throughout the organization if it is practiced by the top management because juniors pick up things from your immediate seniors and the chain goes on.
Q9. If you were to distribute a specific sum of profits earned by your organization between a bunch of people who contributed in different ways towards earning it, on what basis would you divide?
I would divide it equally. I would make a core team and give them a goal and if they reach the goal I would divide it equally. I don’t want to say that you have 20% or 30% share because it is divisive rather than inclusive.
Q10. What in your opinion makes Gozoop a unique workplace?
It’s the culture and the people that makes Gozoop a unique work place. I can only exemplify this through stories:
This was a while back. Our peon had gone on leave for a few days and the office had not been cleaned since a few days. So a few employees came together and decided to come an hour earlier than their working time, without telling me, and took the responsibility of cleaning the entire office.
Just last week I came to know that a Gozooper from our SEO team comes to office an hour early everyday to teach our peon English.
Gozoopers collectively decided to launch a kindness initiative called #1SmallStep, which is about anonymous acts of kindness. Check it out at 1-SmallStep.com.
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