Jombay is an award-winning Talent Measurement & Analytics company. Today we speak to the founder, Suruchi Wagh. She tells us about Jombay and the objectives behind the venture and shares pertinent thoughts on entrepreneurship.
Tell us a little about yourself
I am the Founder and Chief Products Officer at Jombay.com, an award winning Talent Measurement, and Analytics Company.
Before Jombay, I was working with a Stanford Professor in California, and before that I was completing my Masters in University of Southern California, in Los Angeles. I did my Bachelors in Computer Science at College of Engineering Pune. I was born and brought up in Aurangabad.
How did the idea of Jombay.com come about?
Jombay was started as a career counselling portal to help young professionals to make more informed decisions about their careers. We profiled more than a million professionals in 3 years, on their personality, attitude, emotional intelligence, and organization skills. However, we realized that there is a major gap and problem even in corporates when it comes to understanding the behavioural aspects of people. More often than not, people get hired for skills, and fired for behaviour. One of the major challenges in companies is to identify future leaders. Jombay used the psychographic data that was collected as part of the profiling of professionals, and flipped the business model, where now companies can use our tools to identify, develop, and promote the right people.
What are the main services / objectives of your venture?
Jombay is on a mission to help companies reimagine HR. We are building products that take a people first approach to fuelling performance. Jombay's product suite includes competency & value assessments, 360 degree multi-stake holder surveys, HiPo Identification, front-line/sales hiring assessments, and Retention Analytics. Jombay works with Citi, Nestle, DSP Blackrock, Taj Hotels, HDFC, Practo, WNS, Tata AIA, Persistent Systems among others.
What are the initial challenges when starting-up and what would you tell aspiring entrepreneurs to do, to overcome common challenges?
There are 2 biggest challenges in the initial years of starting up. One, building a team that can build world class products, and two, dealing with uncertainty and finding the right product-market fit.
Level A people hire Level A people, Level B people hire Level C people. That’s why the first 4 people that any start-up hires, becomes extremely important. If you continue to keep your benchmarks high, and not compromise on the talent, half battle would be won!
Not always, you would find the product-market fit. It is important to keep hearing to the market, and incorporating relevant feedback. The mantra that we follow at Jombay is “Make mistakes, fail fast, iterate faster!” If we keep waiting to build the perfect product, the product will never see the light of the day. And if we don’t keep iterating faster, we might lose before the race began. Dealing with ambiguity and uncertainty, is a part of any company’s journey. It is important to take the challenge head-on, and be prepared for it.
What is a typical day of work like for you?
I begin my day, either with some exercise or some dance practice, and then some family time, especially with my 2-year old son. My day in office starts at around 9.30AM, and is generally packed with multiple team catch-ups, in the first couple of hours. I generally pull power hours (dedicated hours to work on my own things) before lunch, and in the evenings. I generally work out of the open terrace of our office, when I am working on creative things such as design, new product ideation. I like interacting with my team in an informal setting, and hence have my lunch and evening snacks with them. The day in office typically ends at around 8-8.30PM, post which I spend time reading books, and solving some puzzles with my son :)
Can you leave our readers with a few thoughts?
Start-ups are about surprises, and uncertainties. While one is expected to be passionate, one cannot be very emotional. And successful start-ups do much more than what other companies can pull off. Time is never your friend. As Jordan Belfortz puts it, “The only thing standing between you, and your goal is the bullshit story you keep telling yourself as to why you can’t achieve it! If not you, somebody else, will do what you dreamt of.”