“Curiosity, Passion, Planning & Optimism — that’s Startup Energy” #LKValueSeries
Meet Sri Raghav and Akash Chaudhary, the people behind bringing Lenskart’s products to your doorstep.
Sri Raghav PN heads Lenskart’s Offline Business in Southern Indian zones. Akash Chaudhary manages planning & growth for Lenskart’s Home Try On program.
Q. How do you demonstrate Startup Energy in your everyday work?
Akash: I like working under tight deadlines and love solving complex business problems. It gives me a constant push to stay curious, strive for more and develop breakthrough ideas that can impact the business in a good way.
Raghav: Being an early riser, I get a head start going into the day’s safari (it can really feel like walking through a jungle!). I strongly believe in closing all my daily tasks on the same day. Never let your tasks hang around because you will never have a light day to get back to them later.
I also believe planning for the whole day is a futile exercise so I plan for a couple of hours a day and keep my daily schedule as flexible as possible.
Q. Can you tell us about a time when you demonstrated Startup Energy at work?
Raghav: The one closest to my heart is an initiative that we took to get closer to our people. Our attrition had gone through the roof in November 2019 and we needed to address that. My HR Business Partner and I put together a quick plan wherein we decided to personally meet every single colleague of ours in the region. We invited them over in small batches for an informal morning meet at one of our stores. We spoke about our families, favorite food, movies that we’ve recently watched and so on (apart from a brief business update from me that was more of a footnote). Nothing grand that would take days to organize, just a casual meetup but I made sure I met ALL 200+ colleagues of mine within a span of 15 days. It really brought us together as a team when it was the need of the hour. And we’ve continued doing it now, in fact, my HRBP has loosely termed this exercise as “Coffee with Raghav”!
Akash: It happened right when I joined Lenskart. My first project was to increase the HTO (Home-Try-On) lead flow to yield higher business efficiency. I spent the first month rigorously understanding the nitty-gritty, identifying high impact levers and figuring out the roadmap based on effort vs. impact. And then, there was no looking back. There were a number of things to be done with ascertained impact against each of them. I had the end result clearly laid out in my mind and I began the execution phase with a promise to myself that we will witness growth in HTO demand MoM. Within the next 4 months, we had hit 60% growth and were already preparing ourselves for the next sprint.
Q3. How can someone weave this Value into their work if they aren’t able to currently?
Raghav: There is always so much to do. Wherever you look, there is an opportunity. Remember that nobody is going to come and fix things for you, you have to do it yourself.
Akash: I also strongly believe in investing time in planning than straightaway jumping to execute. It helps you foresee potential bottlenecks and roadblocks. A good plan also saves much of your time which can otherwise be wasted in tackling daily challenges. If you blend this approach with passion, optimism and curiosity, it can solve a major part of your problem statement.
Raghav: Any organization that grows really fast, Lenskart being an example, will always have loose ends and dark corners. What’s really important is that every imperfect process in the organization is an opportunity for you to fix it. Every cog in the leadership chain is open to ideas. Be as brave as possible. What will set you apart is your ability to take initiative and make decisions. When you embark on a new project, no one will be really sure about what to do or what the end result is going to be. You can be the one who grasps that opportunity by its horn and drags it to the finish line.
Akash: Yes, Startup Energy is about all this. We’d say, just love your work and do things with an end goal in mind!
The five Lenskart Values are: 10X Thinking, Startup Energy, Fail Harder, Customer & Team Obsession, and Collaborative Ownership. To know more about each of the Values, visit: https://blog.lenskart.com/what-does-it-take-to-shine-in-lenskart-691463741ccf
