Entrepreneur Within | 1st Edition

By Vedika Manek, IPM 2020-25

Every founder, at some point in their journey, would have faced the dilemma of what kind of culture they would want to build in their startup. This is a product of multiple factors, right from founders’ mindset to finances available to the nature of their operations. I was fortunate enough to have a healthy discussion with the co-founder and CEO of Insurance Samadhan, Deepak Bhuvneshwari Uniyal, in this regard, and the insights I gained have changed my perspective on the importance of people management in a startup team.

Insurance Samadhan has around 150-200 employees, and the founders have incorporated a very interesting naming convention. While asking about ESOPs and ownership in the process, it was discovered that every team member there is addressed as a ‘Partner-in-Progress’, a simple yet powerful gender-neutral term. A partner-in-progress (team member) at Insurance Samadhan is exposed to regular all-hands calls, cross-functional team meets, and more importantly, continuous access to the founders who address their grievances immediately.

Like every startup that faces issues of employee retention and attracting quality talent, Insurance Samadhan has set up a channel to hire and retain employees. This is done through a commission referral-based system, where employees, sorry partners-in-progress, can recommend potential candidates, and in case of successful hire and retention, the referrer gets a cut from the CTC. This kind of system has sped up the hiring process and solved credibility issues through referrals.

What is interesting about these small examples is the company-wide repercussion of this collaborative working environment. A sense of ownership and accountability has led to increased productivity and higher team satisfaction and retention. This is a shining learning example for functionality in any institution, be it a startup, or your college club.

India has overtaken the UK to become the world’s fifth-largest economy and is now behind only the US, China, Japan and Germany, according to IMF projections. A decade back, India was ranked 11th among the large economies while the UK was at the fifth position. With record beating expansion in the April-June quarter, the Indian economy has now overtaken the UK, which has slipped to the sixth spot. The assumption of India overtaking the UK is based on calculations by Bloomberg using the IMF database and historic exchange rates on its terminal. Read more here...

India’s antitrust watchdog has approved PayU’s proposed acquisition of payments gateway BillDesk, the second largest M&A deal in the South Asian market’s consumer internet space, more than a year after the two firms announced their merger plan. The Competition Commission of India said in a tweet that the deal, which will allow the Prosus Ventures-controlled firm to assume a clear lead in the payments processing segment in India, had been approved, but did not elaborate. Read more here...

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