You only live once, so don't wait; just go ahead and start up, says Vidya Santhanam of Fitbots
Vidya Santhanam, the Co-founder of Fitbots, a SAAS platform for performance management, talks about why it is important to take the startup plunge, and how she is scaling her team and herself to target new geographies in the future.
Employees are at the heart of any organisation. With over 15 years in talent management and HR, Vidya Santhanam realised that disengaged employees cost organisations over $500 billion annually. This brought to light the importance of employee engagement systems, and the realisation turned to an idea. In 2018, the idea led to a startup as she started Fitbots, a SAAS platform for performance management and engagement check-ins.
An executive coach from the Coaching Foundation of India, Vidya spent eight years at Mindtree till one day she decided to give up the safety of her job.
“One fine day I moved out and decided to go ahead and start up. You only live once, so don’t wait; just go ahead and start up."
Before starting up she spent a considerable amount of time on research and in talking to people. “I wanted to know if I had the right product-market fit.” She also spent four months in finding her tech co-founder since she was very clear about what she was looking for.
The Fitbots story
Speaking about Fitbots, she says: “When you think about performance management, one would think of bored and dull faces, not a super fun and insightful experience. That's what Fitbots is all about. A real-time performance and engagement check-in platform, which is highly employee-centric and delivers great talent insights to business and HR leaders.”
In this video interview with HerStory, Vidya speaks about scale, challenges, and the opportunities ahead of her startup.
Based in Bengaluru, Fitbots helps organisations align teams to their vision, execute strategy, and drive employee productivity. In the last year and half, Vidya has been busy scaling but says there are many aspects that one needs to focus on. “We scaled not just the team and their mindset, but I also scaled myself.”
Vidya and her team now aim to build a global product and take it to new geographies. "Going forward, we aim to get 80 percent of workplace practices on our conversation platform Fitbots. We are also coming out with our second module very soon," Vidya reveals.
