In a World of Chatur Ramalingams, EMBIBE Is the Phunsukh Wangdu
The phone beeped.
It was a message on LinkedIn. I barely go to LinkedIn unless prompted like this. I have not even updated my LinkedIn profile for a very long time. Anyway, I clicked on the notification to check what the message was about.
Hi, I just happened to go through your LinkedIn profile and impressed with your skill set. We have an exciting opportunity for you at India’s No 1 ED-Tech company based out of Bengaluru. Let’s connect to discuss.
It was a recruiter. Since Embibe is expanding and we are hiring a lot, I thought it was for our company. And so, I replied:
Hello, I think this message was sent to me by mistake. I am already working with India’s No. 1 Ed-Tech company. 🙂
The person replied next day:
Thanks For Connecting PFA JD For the role. If this interests you share me your resume with below details filled.
1. Current CTC,
2. Expected CTC,
3. Notice period…
I felt like editing the message.
I understood that the person didn’t even bother to read my response. Anyway, I opened the doc file. Apparently, India’s No. 1 Ed-Tech company is some other company.
Now that I knew the company, the response of that person made sense.
When I had just joined Embibe as an intern to handle Quora, I did a lot of research to understand the industry. This research involved understanding not only our own products but also what our competitors were offering. In order to do that, there were times when I interacted with the support team of other Ed-Tech companies, including that of this company. Of all those companies, this one, in their responses, exhibited heights of desperation every single time. I asked them tons of questions but the only thing they cared about was my email ID and phone number.
Me: What is adaptive learning?
Ans: I will definitely help you out. Please share your email ID and phone number.
Me: When is CAT notification coming out?
Ans: I will definitely help you out. Please share your email ID and phone number.
Me: Hey, buddy. You had lunch?
Ans: I will definitely…
Ok, the last one was a joke. But I am not making it up when I say that they are inhumanely desperate to make a sale.
So, I remembered all these the moment I saw their logo on the doc file shared by that recruiter.
And I remembered my initial days at Embibe when we were a small team of 40-50 and everyone had to wear many hats.
For example, everyone from the Content Marketing team used to take chats for a couple of hours every day. Just a month or so after I had joined, one morning while I was on chat, a guy messaged. Despite studying hard for two long years, he couldn’t clear a certain exam. He was so depressed and wanted some guidance on what he should do now. At one point, he even said he felt like committing suicide.
When I told my boss about it, she told me to continue talking to the guy, assure him that everything was going to be fine, and make sure that he felt better.
Empathically Strong
I chatted with him for the next three hours. Not to tell him to prepare for the exam again, not to convince him to purchase our product for his preparation. But to make him understand that clearing or not clearing an exam is not the end of the world. To tell him that it’s OK if he doesn’t become an engineer or a doctor. My boss made sure I was empathetic and understanding.
And over the next three years, I saw this empathetic side of this company multiple times. Another time, just after the results of a particular exam was declared, we were making calls to our students. It was 11 at night. Everybody was dead tired. But we had to finish making the calls and get data for our Success Stories.
This guy who did extremely well in his mock tests failed to clear the actual exam. He refused to talk to anyone. There wasn’t any ‘Success Story’ here and yet my CEO picked up the phone and spoke with him for almost 45 minutes.
In a world of Chatur Ramalingams, Embibe is the Phunsukh Wangdu.
And this is just one of the many reasons why I love working here.
In the past three years, my role in the company has changed a lot and yet it never even occurred to me to update my LinkedIn profile for I never contemplated looking for another job. Most of my friends have changed their companies two-three times in the last few years. And they often ask me why I am still working here. I am happy that I got the message from that recruiter. It got me into thinking and the train of thoughts has led me to write this post.
Apart from being Empathically Strong, there are tons of other reasons why I love working here.
Intellectually Fierce
This is a place where you can literally get into a heated debate with your boss if you are not convinced about why you should do a certain task.
I remember once my boss assigned a certain task to me. Apparently, it came from someone senior to her.
Now, we are impact-driven – every task we pick up must have a measurable impact. But this particular task didn’t make any sense to me. So, I told her that I was not going to do it and gave my reasons. She agreed to whatever I had to say but then again the task came from her senior. So, it had to be done. It wasn’t good enough a reason for me to pick up the task. So, I said that I wasn’t going to do it. She said OK.
Then she went to her senior and told him about it. The guy, one of the VPs of the company, could have just fired me. Instead, he came and had a chat with me, explained why we need to do that particular task. I shot questions at him and got my doubts clarified. I was now convinced and picked up the task.
The hierarchy goes down the drain when it comes to intellectual debates (and many other such things) in the company. The guy, currently pursuing his PhD from one of the IITs, had no reason to come over and explain things to me and clarify my doubts. And yet he did.
This type of incident happened multiple times.
A year ago, I got into a huge confrontation with my reporting manager because of some confusion about how my metrics would be measured. She didn’t have an answer as this particular confusion was something new.
She didn’t say anything that day. But the next day, she came to the office all prepared. She did her research, found out how this particular issue is being addressed in other top companies and came up with a solution.
Fearlessly Honest
Another reason why I love working at Embibe is that being brutally honest is highly appreciated here.
Once a certain politician passed away. One of my seniors asked me to write a post on him, his role in education.
Now, this political leader comes from a party which I abhor with all my heart. So, writing something good about him or glorifying him in any way isn’t something I could do. This is one of the few things I have always been extremely strict about.
I told my senior the same and explained my reasons for not being able to write anything about that person. I mean I could have wasted an entire day and then submitted a bullshit article to him. But that would be like playing cheap games. So, I had to be honest. He just smiled and said that it was OK. There were no hard feelings.
Closely Knit
This is another reason why I love Embibe. We are truly a bunch of close-knit people, like a family and I am not exaggerating when I say it.
I can share tons of Embibe stories depicting how close we are but I would like to mention the most recent one.
A month back, amidst this lockdown, I fell seriously sick one night. I was not able to get a cab or anything else to go to the hospital. I stay alone and don’t have many friends or relatives in Bangalore to help. I didn’t know what to do. Scared, I pinged the CEO of the company. Within half an hour, an ambulance picked me up. I was admitted to the hospital in the next hour.
Over the next five days, my boss visited me every day and spent 3-4 hours. He also arranged a place near his house for me to stay after I was released from the hospital. Another person came to the hospital and helped with the insurance. Two other senior members were in constant touch with my family back in Tripura and Assam.
In all these years in Bangalore, I had never felt so sick, weak, helpless and scared. But that was just for one day. The moment my office came to the picture, all my worries were gone. I will be eternally grateful to Embibe for how they helped me during one of the worst phases of my life.
Vision Led
We know where we want to be and what impact we want to make in the field of education and in the lives of students. And every single action of ours is determined by it.
The importance of being vision-led and impact-driven is something I learned the hard way.
I remember I worked the most during my first year at Embibe. At that point, I guess, I was not that serious with my job. To me what mattered was to finish the task assigned to me.
Productivity-wise, I contributed the most during my first year at Embibe. But came the time for the appraisal, I got the lowest rating among all others in my team. I was blasted by the CEO and honestly speaking, I was quite mad at her at that time. I was extremely demotivated.
But then something changed. Rather than on productivity, I started focusing on impact. The results were unbelievable. Over the next few months, I reached my own targets and made remarkable contributions to the target of my team. After 6 months, I got more than 30% hike in the salary. I was also promoted to an Editor.
The realization of the power of being vision-led and impact-driven coupled with the other four pillars of Embibe changed the way I write and work. Also, it drove me into learning new things and developing new skills.
Things that I learned in four years of engineering and two years of masters seemed very less and insignificant compared to what I learned in these three years at Embibe. Not just writing for marketing, but other things as well. For example, I now have a basic-to-intermediate understanding of CSS, HTML, and JavasScript. I am learning Python and have just started with React. I have learned MathJax and started writing academic articles as well. There are many…
My girl always says, “If you are very good at something, it probably means you are overqualified for it.”
Embibe has helped me develop this mindset of learning new things and accepting new challenges. It has given me the opportunity to grow, both professionally and personally. Embibe has changed me…
As I complete three years at Embibe, it felt like a nice opportunity to jot down all these. It’s a privilege to be a part of this revolution.
(This article was first published on LinkedIn)
