At BrilliantRead Media, we always strive to bring some of the meaningful and powerful stories from India and around the world to empower and motivate our growing community of entrepreneurs, investors, management students and aspiring entrepreneurs. This week we invited yet another passionate entrepreneur Manoj Agarwal for an interview with us. He is a business leader, entrepreneur, mentor, consultant and co-founder of Xoxoday.
Xoxoday is a SaaS commerce company solving human motivation and engagement problems through technology. With 700+ clients globally for employee engagement, rewards automation, sales commission and channel partner engagement, it is making a huge difference to the lives of clients worldwide. Let’s learn more about Manoj’s inspiring journey and his advice for our growing community!
Excerpts from our exclusive interview with him:
We are aware of your contribution to the ecosystem, talk us through your background and your journey as an entrepreneur, please;
So I started my entrepreneurial journey in 2012. Entrepreneurial DNA has always been there in me since my childhood because I come from a business family. Having seen my family and relatives doing business, basically my entire life, has helped significantly and it is also a driving factor for me.
I also worked in major corporate companies across different verticals and profiles to develop expertise in different areas. But I always wanted to leverage my learning and expertise to build something meaningful and sustainable and that’s how XOXODAY came into being.
My Journey as an entrepreneur has been extremely fulfilling so far. I learn every single day.
What attracts you towards entrepreneurship instead of a corporate career?
It gives a lot of motivation to do something which you wanted to do. See in a job there are a lot of restrictions. In your own job you’re the boss and you can drive the way you want not by imposing things but by discussing things with your teammates.
Another aspect is I personally get a lot of sense of fulfilment when I am able to give livelihood to 200 plus families. It gives me the motivation that I’m able to create 200 plus jobs in the country. That’s what keeps us going.”
‘Xoxoday’ is such a unique name; talk us through more about it, please. Our audience would also love to know what kind of problem you are solving with the help of your startup?
If you break this word Xoxo and day, ‘Xoxo’ is a word which is mostly used by the youngsters to promote hugs and kisses and in a lighter sense ‘Xoxo’ means love. Our message through this is ‘Make your day lovely with Xoxoday’.
Just like you have a Sunday, Monday or Tuesday, you can add Xoxoday in your week so it becomes Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Xoxoday. It will bring a lot of love and affection in your life. So that has been the story behind the name and that is what we strive to do as a business as well.
Xoxoday is a technology company which has 3 products and these 3 products have an underlying theme of Human Motivation (how we motivate people) to achieve more and to keep them motivated in their regular day to day stuff.
There are 3 products:
– Employee Motivation
– Sales Motivation
– More Consumer Centric where we help brands to increase there brand loyalty among their consumers.
What are the key ingredients of your startup?
I would say the first and foremost is the people we take pride in the kind of team we build and the people we have. A team of young 200 people across India and a couple of countries outside India and most of these guys have been with us a long time. And right now we are quite a stable team.
In today’s world, people are your biggest asset and rest everything else becomes a commodity. If you have the right team you can build great products and companies. If you don’t have the right team, despite the best of funds you might be a failure.
People are the first and foremost.
Second is the Product (we are a product based company) and a services-led company. We have put a lot of efforts to productize consumer problems and give them high-quality technical solutions and to automate their different use-cases through technology. So we are a product-first company.
Third would be the Processes.
In terms of process I mean that you would see a lot of startups in the race of growth and they are very weak in there internal processes.
We tried to automate a lot of day to day processes that employees are not really wasting their time into things which machines can do. So that employees are able to work on things which are valuable for them as well as the company.
In short it is People, Process, Product.
During this COVID-19 crisis, what are the measures you have undertaken to continue your business without disruption?
We took a lot of measures during these tough times. I think we were one of the first companies to have been proactive in taking precaution from March’20 onwards. We took some very immediate steps right after the lockdown, I guess.
Thanks to our entire company and the HR team who have handled the entire process seamlessly. They all did a fantastic job to migrate the entire company from pre-covid to covid era.
Here are some of the immediate steps we have taken:
– We make sure that the employees are safe and healthy at their home.
– We ensure they have the right ingredients for working whether it is a laptop, hardware components or any software requirements, be it internet, dongles etc.
– Making sure that we have the right tools to manage our work. Whether it is a sudden requirement of a collaboration of products and whether it is a sudden requirement of video conferencing tools etc.
– We laid emphasis on a very proactive communication approach during these times from the leadership as well as the HR. We are constantly in touch with them to ensure they are safe in terms of jobs as well as sharing very frequent numbers of what kind of revenue we are doing. What kind of clients we are adding. So that people are not stressed out because a lot of people in this world are losing their jobs.
– In the initial stages, we kept our team pro-actively informed and also we conducted a lot of covid related sessions so that people are aware of the dangers of Covid-19.
– Also, we gave our entire team free Covid-19 insurance and I think almost 20 employees and their family used it when they suffered from Covid.
How do you manage yourself and keep on going despite the challenges? What drives you?
First my mind is very simple and I don’t complicate things and fitness really keeps me going. If the mind, body and soul are healthy, things are very easy to control. If you’re able to win on this we can win anything in our life.
The second is my family. I come from a joint family and it is quite a large family. And we are a big and happy family. Talking to different family members, be it my cousins, my uncle, my aunts etc really helps and it feels very safe.
Third I have a very good list of friends and some are very close friends from my school, college and my work. Meeting them or talking to them really keeps me motivated. I feel very comfortable and safe when you have so many friends around you.
In your opinion what is more necessary: Idea or a good team for a successful startup?
Ideas don’t carry any value and I mean there is a famous saying ‘Ideas are like asses, everyone has one’. Ideas generally have zero value unless it is a big one like a Covid vaccine. I mean you might have a secret formula which no other in the world has so that is an idea. A perfect example of that is a covid vaccine. Especially in this digital world ideas flow within seconds. If somebody says they have an idea in the morning and by the evening it travels down to everywhere in the world.
The devil lies in the details. I strongly feel ideas without execution are useless. In today’s world it’s the execution which matters.”
Maybe 30 or 40 years back, ideas did matter because you had an information asymmetry, information is not flowing so fast.
You are always positive and motivated, what keeps you going?
Good question and I’m not giving any cliche or any standard answer here. I will share with you something which is very true from my heart. My family upbring and if I talk about myself I’m a very simple person.I believe in less is more. My personal lifestyle is very simple and I’ve not indulged myself into too many materialistic things. I have been practising yoga for the last 15 years and there is hardly a day when I skip yoga or gym or sports. I play a lot and that helps me stay stress-free, motivated and healthy.
We would love to know your advice for all those starting out as an aspiring entrepreneur;
I’ll keep it short and I’ll give key pointers
– Don’t go by fashion and the facts.Try to solve a real consumer problem. Something which you understand deeply and you know that this is a consumer problem and we can solve it properly.
– Don’t run after funding, funding will come to you if you’re doing good. The point is not to go after funding but to go after revenue. See, a lot of startups think that the successful metric for a company is getting funding but what matters the most is to make the company highly profitable.
– Respect relationships because of a lot of digitalisation. When you’re building a company, you would need a lot of people who will go along with you whether it is an investor, supplier, client or your own employees. You might become a famous person and you might make a lot of money but don’t forget human relations and don’t forget human respect. It will take you a lot farther.
BrilliantRead is committed to bringing stories from the startup ecosystem, stories that reshape our perspective, add value to our community and be a constant source of motivation not just for our community but also for the whole ecosystem of entrepreneurs and aspiring individuals.
Note: If you have a similar story to share with our audience and would like to be featured on our online magazine, then please write to us at [email protected], we will review your story and extend an invitation to feature if it is worth publishing.
