Culture at IDfy

The last few months have been hectic and exciting as well.  We have scaled up significantly and there is a lot going on at IDfy.  We grew from about 12 people in April 2015 to 140 people now.  Thats just crazy growth.

I have spent 4 years building this business and the one thing that keeps me going is the culture at IDfy.  With the growth in the number of people, I have thought hard on what it means to be a part of the IDfy journey.  I wanted to codify that before we get any bigger, its going to be very hard for us to maintain the culture if we don't articulate it now.

This weekend was spent just thinking about exactly what it means to be IDfy, and something that resonates with everyone.  And these words cannot and should not be abstract and intangible.  Wanted to stay away from using words such as integrity, honestly caring etc.  These I believe are intangible, and I would not be able to rally a whole organisation  with these words.  Which company ever says that they don't want to have high integrity in their employees?

So here is what I came up with, based on exactly the culture at IDfy.

1) Communicate- Communication is not just about telling people what you want or what you are doing, but also ensuring that the other person understands what you mean.  Here is something I told my peeps :)

"I want inter team communication to happen, that means people from any team should be able to walk up to their peers else where to ask for help or find out whats happening.   This is the only way that we can improve processes and systems.  And more importantly this is how work is going to be FUN.  And Guys fun is a lot more important that anything else.  Communication also means that you take the time to ensure that people understand what you expect of them"

2) Own - Own is about ensuring that you take ownership for your deliverables - i.e. until its done its your responsibility.  And my peeps got a mail from me about this :)

"if you have told someone that you are going to finish something at a certain time, its your responsibility to finish it or at least inform as to why it won't get done.  Its not acceptable to leave your peers hanging.  And definitely not appropriate to say that person X didn't do his job therefore I was not able to.  Essentially what this means is that each and every one of us is responsible and accountable to each other, if there are roadblocks etc, escalate or ask for help from others."

3) Step up - Stepping up is about taking ownership and helping out on things that you are not directly responsible for.  This is basically about taking initiative.

"This essentially means, if you see something breaking and you know what needs to be done to fix it - help out.  This means regardless of whether its your responsibility take on more.  We are all struggling and need help, take and ask for help."

4)  Have Fun - Well let me just copy what I told my guys:

"Guys I don't want to work for a company where we are too serious.  I have given you all guns to shoot people with, I don't see enough people getting shot at.  Each and everyone of you is responsible for making this place fun :)"

This got me thinking about whether I embody these principles, and the answer was a resounding NO.  Its honestly not right for me to expect everyone to live by these core cultural tenets when I myself don't follow them.  Many a times I have communicated poorly, Took no ownership - but heck I am a fun guy so fun was never a problem ;)

So who actually stood out amongst the crowd as the torch bearers for this? When I asked the team about this, everyone talked about 2 guys, Akash and Rakesh (Aka Mama).  These two have taken complete ownership for their work, stepped up and helped out people, Took time to explain until people understood.  Most importantly they did this better than even the senior management.  

Kudos to these two, we have decided to send them on a all expense paid vacation for being so Awesome.  So proud of these two young men.  

Why we took a call to not play the price war?

The flavor of the season these days is about reducing the price, many a times even below costs.  Many startups, along with serious encouragement from their VCs, are just not focused on unit economics.  I find that a little concerning, as quality and service comes second for many of these well funded startups, and some which aspire to be well funded.


We also have had these pressures in the past, and continue to have it today.  But, at IDfy, we focused on differentiation rather than price.  As an entrepreneur in India its tough, as most customers/people are quite price sensitive, but we have been fortunate enough to not loose our customers.  In fact many have chosen us inspite of having a ridiculously low cost player in the space. 

How did we do it?

If you pay peanuts you are going to get monkeys!

While I hate cliche's; that pretty much covers it.  As a startup focused on high quality, great customer service and mind blowing technology its important to let your customers know that they will loose all that by going with a low cost player. and honestly customers get it, or at least the important ones do.

Lamba race ka ghoda...

As VCs fund young kids who barely have learnt how to talk yet, I still think there is great value in focusing on the fundamentals ie unit economics, business model and great products.  Unfortunately there are too few people in the Indian startup ecosystem who are focusing on the fundamentals.  However thank god for enterprises they understand this basic principle :) 


We have awesome VCs/board/advisors who understand the above

Disruption doesnt have to be based on price, it can be on quality. Thank god our VCs get that :)  

What makes IDfy awesome

We have come a long way at IDfy and we turned 4 on the 31st of May.  To tell you the truth we have had a serious roller coaster ride in the last 4 years.  With many ups and downs and the team at IDfy has helped me be upbeat throughout.  Not to mention an amazing early stage VC (Blume ventures), and my personal coach Vivek who invested in us early and believed in us when we hit bottom a couple of years back.

As my first post on the IDfy story, I want to touch upon what makes me want to come to work everyday.  When I started IDfy, I was clear, I wanted this place to be an antithesis to every place that I worked at.  And more than anything else, even the idea itself, I wanted to ensure that we are a place that doesn't have to worry about attrition, people issues etc.  But, honestly, most of the culture was not planned.  We created greatness together as a team, right from the first person that we hired.


So we started as an idea in a room in Delhi at my buddy's (Vineet Jawa) house (also my partner in crime at both my startups).  We mulled over it for close to 6 months before incorporating it.  We hired Kailash, our first employee, even before we incorporated the company.  I met him over many single malts at my house in Bandra, I don't even remember most of that conversation, but followed that up with a proper interview in candies, and he was hired.  We hired Kaushik Shah (our second employee) as a tech consultant who ended up being our CTO :)

But honestly what made IDfy awesome was a young chap right out of college, Kaushik Srivatsan, who really set the tone for the rest of our 4 years.  Inadvertently, he actually set the culture at IDfy and made it brilliant.  As CEOs we are married to our ideas, scale, revenues and god knows what else, but personally setting the right culture I think can enable even mediocre people achieve greatness, and at IDfy we have great people so we achieved awesomeness :).  Kaushik has now left IDfy to pursue his masters in the US, but even today people at IDfy talk about him almost everyday, and we still maintain that he held us together, and in fact still holds us together.  Lot of our stories revolve around "remember when Kaushik did that?"

I remember in 2013 when we hit rock bottom, I told the team that we had 2 months of money left and not too many VCs were interested in investing in us.  I told them that I would understand if they looked for a job, and my team almost unanimously answered "doobenge tho saath me doobenge" (if we are gonna drown we will drown together).  I have to say that I am privileged to work with a team like this.  Honestly the guys at IDfy rock.  I have not worked for a company like this, ever.  And a lot of this is not me, its really the team here at IDfy. 

Then came Vivek and Blume Ventures who believed in us early on, when we didn't even have revenues to show.  In fact, Blume and Vivek believed in us more than we believed in ourselves in those early days.   We went through rock bottom in 2013, and had about 2 months of money left in the bank, Blume and Vivek came to our rescue again and gave us a bridge round. At this point we were making about rs 50K/month in revenue (to be honest thats nothing).   I am not sure what made them believe in us, but all I can say is I am grateful.    Post this, there was no turning back for IDfy, we doubled our revenue run rate every quarter, thanks to our amazing customers.  We rocked the next couple of years,  and continue to rock even now (profitably).  We grow much faster today than we ever did before.

Throughout the journey I have questioned myself many times thinking about lost salary, free time etc.  Thank god for my Wife, my Team, and my investors, I cant see myself working anywhere else, it is a privilege to work at IDfy, you guys make me want to come to work everyday, and give it my all.   
We have built technology which rocks, we have an operations team which punches way above its weight, we have ideas which is going to change the world and the way we look at things, we have a culture which ensures that everyone gives their 150%, what else can a CEO ask for?  We rock not because of me, but because of the team and everyone that believed in us (including our customers, who many a times have had to put up with our growing pains).

As we enter a new era at IDfy, where we continue to grow profitably (yes very few startups can say that in India), we are worried about our culture and how we will maintain the amazingness thats IDfy.  We are a crazy bunch of people, and almost everyone who meets us at our office can feel this amazing positive vibe, and many wonder how we are able to to this.  To tell you the truth, we don't know, but we know one thing, we definitely know how to hire great people.  We pay a lot of attention to cultural fit more than anything else, because honestly why would anyone want to work at a company which has great people but no culture?  Even if IDfy, tomorrow, does not exist (very unlikely the way that we are growing) I know that IDfy has made a difference in each of our employees lives.  In fact, I don't know how any of us can work anywhere else ;)

Hats off to everyone at IDfy as we take this company to the next level. And Kaushik Srivatsan, come back we miss you here.