Startups – the best place to Learn, Unlearn & Relearn!

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18 Oct 2020

Startups – the best place to Learn, Unlearn & Relearn!
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- Student Careers Student Life
“Starting Small is the beginning of it all” – Rumont Tekay

Having graduated as an Engineer in 2018 and possessing an endless urge to grow & learn, I started my career as an HR with a Manufacturing company at Chennai. The experience was great on the learning front. But I felt there was a constant struggle in innovating and posing challenges to myself, as this company too, like any other MNC, had certain limitations with respect to my roles. My thirst to explore and understand Business better, increased.

This was when I decided to work with an exciting Chennai based E-Learning startup funded by Y-Combinator (2019) after a year. Though I was feeling perplexed seeing the difference in the organizational climate and the change in culture when compared to my previous job, I knew I was going to have an unmatchable experience. True to this, Day 1 left me clueless where nothing was as I imagined. The profile I was into being new, and I, being the first member of the team had to look for the things I needed, all by myself amidst that young and vibrant culture emanated by approximately 50 people in a small crooked space.

There was no process of typical onboarding, no pause, no reading and digesting of existing procedures and no limitations. This liberty to explore the organization, people, with the Founders themselves, without any hesitation is all what I wanted. This served as a boost to my motivation right from Day 1!

Though I had little knowledge on how a Business functions on a macro level, the start-up experience taught me the nuances of it from the grassroot level. My learnings on how the company was founded, the background, the objective and what were / are the struggles and challenges put forth for the industry were real and relatable. Being a part of the Sales Quality team, the culture made it very easy and comfortable for me to work closely with the team, understand their concerns and not only suggest solutions but also experiment and implement them with complete autonomy. The kind of mentorship I got from the Co-Founders, Managers and colleagues is humongous.

The other most important perquisite is that I could literally see the business grow with and relate it to the effort I put in my work. The impact of every function right from Sales & Marketing up till the Support functions on increasing the customer base and retaining them, was obvious and well-measured. Growth was not only visible in terms of numbers but also in terms of the growing team size from 50 to 150 in less than 7 months, a shift to a new co-working space, spotting our Ads on Newspapers and steady improvement in all basic systems and processes. The transparency between the Founders and the team was maintained throughout this journey and that, I feel, was the most inspiring factor that drove people to work enthusiastically.

Even without a traditional Performance Management system, the zeal to work hard, learn and grow was tremendously high in the startup arena, when compared to that of the MNC. The organizational goals were cascaded perfectly to the individuals, which matched with each of our personal goals and aspirations. We celebrated small wins and set high standards & targets for ourselves simultaneously. The spark to excel and perform better was constant throughout my stint at the start-up, and I saw the same with almost everybody in the team. It was here, where a lot of situations pushed me to Learn, Unlearn and Relearn beyond my limits! This was the beginning of it all.

I would always prefer collaborating and making a change rather than following stereotypes! And that is the exact philosophy that SOIL encourages in me and in my batchmates. My unique perspectives on problem solving, innovating, and thinking out of the box were some of the key factors that helped me crack the SOIL Admissions. These are the same skills that are appreciated in class and fine-tuned and molded among peers.

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Nivedha Devi S
PGPM – Human Resources

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