How do organisations cope when they undertake explosive growth journeys? What happens within a startup that is just getting off the ground? How does the leadership make sense of things amidst such chaos? Can this kind of initial growth really be planned and managed? Importantly, how does one define and evolve a culture that is specific to the organisation during such periods of chaos that would perhaps make the difference between a successful startup and an also-ran?
We interacted with one such startup–Grofers, to find out the impact its growth story is having on its employees and how the founders are translating their vision to even the newest person onboarding at the firm.
Grofers, which was founded in 2013, started as a B2B Company and has over the last two years seen a tremendous growth trajectory. It is now present in nine cities in the country.
From an employee strength of 180 people last December, it has grown to 3300 people currently.
Talking about the work culture the Founder Albinder Dhindsa says
There is sort of blue collar work ethic that permeates the company. and people who understand that and when they talk to us and talk about the right things, where they talk about their work ethics, so somebody who is actually going to get this done, its actually very important for us. You will see lot of employees come through personal networks of existing employees because people value this sort of thing that hard work is appreciated as much if not more.
Expecting employees to exhibit the same level of excitement as the founders may not be an uphill task while the company is growing fast but the challenge for the founders is to keep them engaged and motivated through tougher times. While Grofers need not worry about growth currently, the challenge now is to get the best of people on board and take the company to its next level.
In this video we chatted up with the founder and some employees to get a sense of how Grofers is living the experience.
Cameraman: Manoj
Video Editor: Anjali Achal