Mohit Gundecha and Suruchi Wagh studied at COEP. Mohit is a Marwadi from Ahmednagar, Suruchi a Maratha from Aurangabad. Suruchi is a year junior to Mohit and they first met when they worked together in Abhiyanta, the COEP college magazine. Mohit left COEP immediately after his bachelors to do his Masters in Management and Engineering at Stanford. Suruchi followed in his footsteps later – also did the same program, but from the University of Southern California. They were married as soon as both had finished their masters. (Suruchi was the one who proposed.)
While at Stanford, Mohit got bitten by the startup keeda. He and his friends were mostly moonlighting in analysis paralysis mode. Until one fine day, Suruchi, by then already the better half, told the guys ki bhai tumse to hona nahin hai. Mohit then put across a challenge to her to fir aap hi kijiye. Suruchi responded by putting in her papers at Risk Management Solutions, a company founded by a Stanford professor. Mohit by then had shifted base to India where he was the India head of a startup called mig 33.
Suruchi was successful in raising funds in the early months of their startup. Having spent time in Silicon Valley must have surely helped. Rajan Mehra, of Nirvana ventures, was the lead investor. Suruchi also shifted to Pune once the fund raising happened. The company was called Next Leap technology. Their office in Pune is in my neighbourhood of Pimple Nilakh. The initial model was a business to consumer one. They wanted to offer a service where people could get themselves profiled on behaviour. They developed their own psychometric test for doing the same. The team reasoned that, along with the resume, this kind of behaviour test would give additional insights to a recruiter.
The company got good advice from its investors and were under pressure to start raising funds on the P and L rather than the balance sheet. The unfortunate conclusion that Suruchi and Mohit reached at the end of 2 years: the retail customer was not ready to pay. It was time to pivot. By this time, the funds left over were just enough to pay 5 months of salary. These were dark times and there was talk of shutting shop and returning the remaining money to investors. But Rajan told them to hang on – it was ok to fail, but not ok to jump ship. The company pivoted to a business to business model. Suruchi, who was already 28 by this time, also decided it was time to pivot to motherhood. Her delivery would coincide with the product delivery of the new B2B baby – Jombay.
Maybe there was some bad vaastu associated with NextLeap. But with the pivot, came a new name – Jombay. The name was chosen because it sounded good and more importantly the domain was available. Jombay was also an interesting conversation starter. It made a lot of people believe that this company is from Bombay. Later on a lot of stories got made by their PR agency on how the founders decided to get this name. Jombay in Bangla means jamta hain.
The b2b market was an old boys club with a lot of legacy players. But legacy also comes with its own set of problems – the gorillas would be matched by the guerillas’ nimbleness. Mohit is the business development guy in the company. Mohit still remembers the first cold call for Jombay at the Taj. He first sold himself to Prashant Khullar, who was with HR at Taj group then. Having got his foot into the door, Mohit went on to sell his company’s products. The Taj group looks at three basic criteria when it comes to hiring: Passion, sensitivity and giving. Jombay promised to create a customised psychometric test which would test candidates on these three.
Those of you who have used psychometric tools would know that these are very well tested instruments. The validity suffers even when you add or subtract a single question from the test. How did Jombay establish the validity for a customised psychometric assessment tool? And how do they do this on the fly? This is where digital DNA helped. Jombay went to the internet and got 1 million people to take this test. This gave them the data they could use for validity testing. Another difference in the Jombay tests was in the way the analysis was reported. Unlike legacy psychometric tests, where a trained psychologist has to translate all the mumbo jumbo to simple English, Jombay made the reports simple for the reader to understand.
End of the story: Prashant Khullar gives them the contract for Taj Mumbai. The first order was for a grand sum of Rs. 100,000 for an unlimited number of tests. Very soon the contract was extended to 10 hotels of the Taj group. Having got a marquee customer in their pockets, the journey from there on became smoother. Soon a lot of customers from Bombay were on Jombay.
One of the things that also helped grow the business was an innovative communication strategy. In 2008, Mohit met Rajesh Jain. Those who are not in the know, Rajesh was the original poster boy of the IT valuation game. Rajesh launched India’s first Internet portals in March 1995. They grew to be the largest. Satyam Infoway acquired Rajesh’s fledgling 20-person company for Rs 500 crore in one of Asia’s largest deals in November 1999. Rajesh advised Mohit to build his own brand. Rajesh has been an early adopter of blogging. He advised Mohti to start a blog to build the brand. It took 3 years for Mohit to pick up Rajesh’s advice.
But since that day there has been a blog post going out every week from either Mohit or Suruchi. This blog has been followed by the young people in the HR space and it has become a visiting card of sorts for Jombay. People seem to know a lot about Mohit even before they meet him. This is a USP which has been difficult to replicate by Jombay’s competitors. Jombay owns its own media property! Jombay has built on this thought leadership by creating a community which serves as an Ideas exchange. They use these fora to also have gamified awards – the prime one being Indian HR’s 40 under 40.
Mohti and Suruchi were quizzed by Sujit Karpe on work-life balance when life partners become business partners. Mohit remembered the warning his ex-boss gave him when the duo started Jombay. The outcome of this venture would see them split up or form a bond which is unbreakable. Turned out that Fevicol won. Mohti and Suruchi believe that business and personal life segregation is a pipedream. Suruchi recalls being on a 2 month bed rest during her first pregnancy. And how she pioneered work from home in that phase, lying on her left side. A maushi was hired one month before her elder son Kabir was born. The 60 days of lack of work was very depressing, so the next maternity leave was compressed to 41 days when her younger son, Samar was born.
Culture is built by your initial team. So the first round of hiring is critical. This founding team brings a sense of loyalty and shared work ethic. The first three years were tough. Jombay believes that a team that eats together, will fight together. So evening snacks were an important part of team building. The listening skills of a founder are critical for growth and pivots. Another founder skill is the ability to keep the ego in check. At Jombay, decisions are merit driven. Either you convince me or I convince you. Once in a while veto power does get used though.
2 years ago, Jombay decided to join hands with Ma Foi consulting, one of the veterans in the senior management recruitment and training space. The duo have merged their companies and an IPO is in the offing. I suspect that this is a marriage solemnised in the temples of the Venture Capitalists. The soon to be launched IPO also hints at some investors seeking an exit. Mohit’s logic was that Jombay’s strength was in middle management at Ma Foi complemented that with their expertise in senior management. The duo also believes that a lot of their business clients are looking at an end to end solution for their recruitment needs. My apprehension is about the culture mix. Although Jombay has matured and grown, will its young team be able to gel well with the grey hairs of Ma Foi? I remember a similar merger that took place many years ago between AOL and Time Warner. Time Warner survived the merger, but AOL exists now only as a Wikipedia entry.