Beyond The Code

Maulik Sailor (00:11)
Hello and welcome to a brand new episode of Beyond the Code by Notchup .com. Today we have a very interesting guest, Ms. Saumya Vardhan, whom I know from my business school days and she's a very interesting lady having done a very unusual startup and then moving on to be currently a digital transformation director at Yahoo.

And in this podcast, we're touching upon a lot of different aspects of her career and some trends like digital transformation, the agile transformation, talking about her sort of journey. We are also talking about spirituality and how does that impact us all and so on. So stay tuned and please welcome Saumya to this podcast.

Maulik Sailor (01:01)
Hello, Saumya how are you doing?

Saumya Vardhan (01:03)
Hi, Maulik Good to see you here. And thank you for inviting me to this podcast.

Maulik Sailor (01:08)
Hey, no worries. It's been a long time coming. We've been missing out each other for a while with different time zones and all. But I'm glad that finally we are doing this. This is my first one after summer. So as you know, September gets busy. And this is the first one I'm doing for this quarter. Right.

Saumya Vardhan (01:24)
Yeah, no, I'm very excited and it's truly a pleasure to be here and have the chance to talk about all things tech startup and transformation. I think some of the common things we share in our background and from London class working in big tech industries. I'm super excited.

Maulik Sailor (01:36)
Total.

Cool. All right, so the folks who don't know, know, to our audience, you I know Saumya from our MBA days. She was in a year ahead, so I was not in the same class, but I do know of her because I think she was one of the cover girls of the MBA process, if I'm not wrong, right? And she came in once to talk about her experiences and then we connected, you know, she also, I was doing a venture in Paris and she helped me with that one out as well.

Saumya Vardhan (01:58)
Stop the

Maulik Sailor (02:11)
So it's been a long time that we have known for each other and few years back. Saumya we have made a big switch from From being in London to the Bay Area. So we're going to cover about her experiences in this talk why don't we start first with you? Saumya you know, what are you up to nowadays? You know, what are you working on? You know, what does your day -to -day, you know life look like?

Saumya Vardhan (02:32)
Yeah, sure, Maulik would firstly thank you for this opportunity again. And I'm super excited. I think, as you know, starting from London, where I started my professional journey, went back to India, dived into entrepreneurship, and then moved to Silicon Valley, California, all three very, different experiences being in the startup and I would say professional learning all the sides.

I think I've had like really good diverse and rewarding journey in the tech industry so far. In terms of my current role, I am currently working as a director of digital transmission office at Yahoo, where I'm responsible for driving the strategy and delivery of a multi -year tech transmission program. It's company -wide, it's portfolio level, one of the programs I always dreamt of working through. And I'm very happy that I managed to.

lead that and got it to a mature state. that's what I'm and I think it might be worth me covering a little bit of my background with the audience so that they can understand a little bit of cocktail of experience I've had. Right. So that people can relate to it. And, you know, I think we're going to talk about it, right? Like a lot of people have now different flavors to themselves. And this has become a very common thing that, you not that you just go into one

work stream, but you talk about, you people have had experience with entrepreneurship, with consulting, you know, with tech, and with with I would say now the whole industry and paradigm has shifted to AI and, and a lot of like AR VR side of things. So, again, in terms of my background, I have led large scale technology programs, particularly for big large scale, you know, American companies like Verizon and Yahoo.

Previously, I also worked and enjoyed the role of a strategy consultant. I worked with Ernst & Young KPMG in London, where I did &A, more mergers and acquisitions, more in operation strategy, along with a flavor of financial consulting in it. And as I mentioned, I've been an entrepreneur where I started a venture in spirituality in India, which New York Magazine describes as Uber of God. But I really learned about, you know,

setting everything from scratch, which gave me a unique perspective on balancing a large scale, how we can look at modifying a business model from a large scale to a small scale and still implement it from ground up. And today I'm excited to dive into some of those strategies with you and our audience to share some of the lessons that I've learned along the way. And I look forward to our conversation.

Maulik Sailor (05:12)
I've been involved in both sides as well. I've not done consulting because that's one domain that I generally personally never liked. So I kind of stayed away from that. What I've done like yourself, I've done large enterprise transformations work as well as startup work. But why don't we start with your current role at Yahoo? Yahoo is an interesting company. One of the top innovators back in the days,

kind of completely disrupted by Google and some newcomers in the market. But it's great to see that Yahoo is still going on. I said that actually an interesting journey similar to Yahoo. So I worked for Nokia before my MBA. And when I worked, when I joined Nokia in 2008, I believe, it was the number one mobile company, top five brand in the world. As I joined, they have their town hall, they say, we got this many billion euros in cash just lying around.

I don't like this sounds crazy, you it's nuts. But what was more crazy that when I started my MBA in 2010, they were already out of the market. Right. Within two years, they were completely out of the market. So the pace of disruption, you know, that kind of completely blew my mind that how quickly the things can change in the tech world. And that the whole notion of, you know, this agile and digital transformation was like, right. At that time was the right hot potato going on, you know, back then.

And I'm glad to ask you a question around that. Okay, in your current role, I think you're still in this transformation mode, right? So let's talk about that. You know, what kind of transformation is Yahoo doing? And again, just for clarity, don't talk about anything confidential. You know, let's just stay within the public domain.

Saumya Vardhan (06:48)
Yeah, no, excellent question. And then again, I'll just dive on the details more on a high level in terms of, guess, just Yahoo for our audience as well as digital transformation overall and given that kind of perspective as well. So Yahoo always, I think, has been, I still consider it because I grew up in Yahoo days using Yahoo Messenger. Yahoo Mail was my first email account. I'm very, very passionate and close to this brand. And I think a lot of people probably in our

Whoever was a user, internet user who was born in 80s or 90s have had their first exposure into digital world through Yahoo, right?

Maulik Sailor (07:25)
Yeah, totally. I still use my Yahoo as my main email.

Saumya Vardhan (07:28)
Look at that, look at that, right? I mean, we have some personal stories. I've come across so many people where Yahoo was touched upon the life, made them meet their partners, find their job opportunities, connected them to their passions to sport or finance or tech, whatever you want to call it, right? I think for a particular generation, it holds a special place because it was a gateway to the digital world. Yahoo, I would say was perhaps a huge ecosystem created ahead of its time.

And I think at that time, were things like Yahoo Lifestyle, Yahoo Shopping, there was a messenger app, news, sports, finance. Think about it. It's such a big scope of services that was created.

Maulik Sailor (08:09)
Yeah, think Yahoo finance, you know, actually, I still use Yahoo finance. It's still pretty good product.

Saumya Vardhan (08:15)
Yeah, yeah, no, and it's gone through a lot and I feel Yahoo really enjoys the latent love for the brand. From the audience, I think that's one of the key things that I mean, people have like very, very good fond memories of the brand. In terms of current times, Yahoo is not just, know, we have the name is Yahoo, but it's actually

comprise of more than 13 different properties, which is part of some of them, which I just mentioned about the Yahoo ecosystem. But Yahoo is also now combined with AOL, TechCrunch, Makers, Build by Girls, Riot, a lot of other brands as well. So it's not just one particular company, but it is an amalgamation of multiple brands put together. What I say, it's like a bouquet of flowers. The audience sees it as different brands. And then it's so diverse that,

Maulik Sailor (09:04)
you

Saumya Vardhan (09:07)
On one side, we're serving customers who are sports fans, connecting them through Yahoo Sports. On the other side, very, very different type of audience for Yahoo Finance. Then Mail, another unique product. Then you have Yahoo News, Lifestyle, Entertainment, all those businesses along with the UL. So it's pretty big. We're still the fifth biggest, largest property in America.

As for the stats, I did during my presentation at TechX North America, so at that time in May, you were the sixth biggest property in America with a huge number of audience, more than I think 70 billion, serving 70 billion audience. And again, I'm gonna double check on this number, but my memory I think is probably okay for now, but I might come back and add an edit if needed.

So yeah, so no, it's great. And then now Yahoo has gone through a transformation where we are really looking at tech modernization program internally, moving from legacy, taking advantage of some of these new technologies out there, particularly, know, elastic services, cloud infrastructure, looking at, you know, some of the industry shifts from AI, tech, you know, that side of space. And also, I think really focusing from our users point of view in terms of

Maulik Sailor (10:03)
Yeah.

Saumya Vardhan (10:31)
what are the new updates or customer -specific products that we can create. So that's where I think the whole multi -year journey of digital transformation is for Yahoo.

Maulik Sailor (10:43)
Yeah, cool. I just talking of the digital transformation, there was a parallel term, you know, around, you know, late 2010s or northeast, as we call about agile transformation, right? And there was a lot of agile coaches and, you know, agile scrum masters and product owner roles and stuff were coming up, you know, post MBA, you know, interesting thought. When I, when we, I completed my MBA in my class, actually no one really knew what was product owner or product manager role was.

What is scrum methodology? I'm talking 2010. And then after that, this whole industry blew up. But now I'm seeing again, it's kind of stagnating. I'm not really seeing a lot of agile transformates and coaches or scrum master roles going out in industry. So what do you think? Is the job done and the state or is still a thing?

Saumya Vardhan (11:35)
Yeah, and I think maybe to answer that question, maybe we should break it down into two parts, I guess, because I think you touched upon the digital transformation. And then we talked about agile transformation. I'm very deeply involved in both sides. So I definitely want to take that into two separate questions if that's OK with you. Yeah, so let's talk about digital transformation first. I think it's one of those terms which has now almost become very abused because

Maulik Sailor (11:53)
Yeah, yeah, why not?

Saumya Vardhan (12:02)
Digital transformation can mean different things to different people, right? It's such a genetic term that it can have any, any different flavors of their own. But essentially where I see it as digital transformation is that, you know, any business out there now, even if it's a brick and mortar, mom and pop store, anything which is out there or a really old tradition practice or a high tech venture, every, every business's core part is tech, right? Even if you're a small venture, you need to be discoverable.

through your social media platforms, your customer should be able to reach out and after COVID, we are so used to now searching online only instead of physically going anywhere, right? And that is a huge part. So I think digital transformation is probably a process to be described where you can really look at looking at your business to...

modernize existing products, services, be really connected to technology and keep upgrading and adapting to the newer technology, whatever comes through, embrace that. So in my opinion, digital transmission looking at what can you deliver to your customer better by continuously improving your services and products. And I think it's not a one -time process. We all will agree that the place we are in.

Maulik Sailor (13:09)
Hmm.

Saumya Vardhan (13:19)
It's a continuous effort now. We have to continuously evolve, right? Because yesterday we had cloud technology, then today we have AI, then we have Gen .AI, then we'll have some other flavor, right? We'll have a combination of other things like that. And that's where I think the key is for digital transformation.

Maulik Sailor (13:38)
Yeah, and then sorry, so you were going to talk about agile, right?

Saumya Vardhan (13:42)
Yeah, and then the second part too is agile transformation, right? And I'm gonna address your question, which is a very interesting question about how we looked at agile before, what it is now. So agile transformation is, I think nothing but I would say really adapting quickly to these beating it technological changes, as I said, cloud computing, embracing some of these AR, VR technologies, moving to 5G, all of that.

embracing the industry shifts with GenAI, as well as cybersecurity solutions, and then managing crisis like COVID -19. So what do we need? We need our internal teams to be able to adapt to these changes rapidly and fast so that we have our efficiencies and focus on the right place. And I would say in, I think, even five, seven years from now, any one of these changes

would be a program in a company on its own, right? If you need to move to cloud, that becomes a program and maybe, you know, there are a certain number of people assigned to it. Those people are just dedicated to that program doing that. Now we are living in a time where you'll acknowledge that we are addressing multiple challenges at the same time. It's the same people you have. You can't increase the number of people on board, but you have to address all of these to stay relevant in the market and be competitive.

with the same workforce, but having to do multiple things at the same time. For that, you need to be agile. You need to have an agile enterprise to have, you know, greatest, you know, improve developer productivity, to be able to address all these shifts. And this is where I, to me, the key differences like digital transformation is really looking at your customers, the services and products you are looking at from a company and agile transformation to me is ensuring you have agile, you know, enterprise level.

agility. That's how I take it as, right?

Maulik Sailor (15:39)
Yeah, just touching a little bit more on the agile side, right? So initially it was very fairly simple, know, extreme programming practices, know, scrum framework and so on. And then suddenly, you know, companies realized that, okay, scrum works at the smaller team level, but not at the enterprise level. So then came the whole, you know, framework like safe, you know, less framework and so on. What do you think, you know, what's going on? You know, are there any more frameworks after that or, you know,

what do you think is a framework that is kind of dominating in the space right now?

Saumya Vardhan (16:11)
Yeah, yeah, this is a great question, Maulik. And I think it blends very, very well once we talk about the agile transformation and agility in the organization. These frameworks, definitely when they started, were appropriate for those times and were appropriate for the scale of businesses, as you can imagine. think earlier we had lot more, we had less digital businesses, and we didn't really have hybrid work environment.

But now we need to be operating at a very large scale globally across all types of product services to be able to deliver across the world. So these frameworks still exist, but I would say they have all been adapted to different flavors by different teams on how they adapt. So the first part I would say that to address your question is we have newer models for sure now. For example, Spotify created the Squad model.

where you're really looking at having, you know, certain six to nine people in a team. And then you have tribes which have multiple of these squads and then they are connected through solving for a particular goal or a business problem, right? While it has its benefits, it also has a little bit of drawbacks in terms of creating silos within like one particular tribe where they're only focusing one problem and things like that. Every program or, you know, methodology and initiative will...

lead to its own pros and cons, right? So that's something to always take it with a pinch of salt, that you will come across that there's no perfect model that fits all, right? It's all about how you want to manage your scope, your work and what you need to deliver. And then you have Amazon on the other side, which really supports experimentation, right? So they even came up with a concept of two pizza team. I don't know if you heard about that, right?

Maulik Sailor (18:00)
Yeah, yeah. No, we don't know. We don't know podcasts with somebody from, from Amazon. And we were precisely talking about two pieces of themes.

Saumya Vardhan (18:08)
Okay, then your audience might know about that, right? Where you're talking about just enough number of people on the team who can just finish or who can have a lunch or dinner with two pizzas ordered, right? And then we have Google on the other side where they are running large scale programs.

Maulik Sailor (18:11)
Yes.

Yeah.

Sorry, that just came to my mind. You know, when you are talking to Vizatim, you know, are we talking American size or the Italian size?

Saumya Vardhan (18:31)
I'm glad you didn't bring in Chicago pizza and that one because I think one would be enough for at least for me and if people like, know, have appetite like mine. I have a big appetite. Don't get me wrong. But yeah, I think we're talking about American pizza size given I'm in America and Amazon is an American company. But yeah, I'm sure you can apply these models across as well. Yeah. Yeah. And I was just just to continue back and then Google

Maulik Sailor (18:45)
Yeah.

Saumya Vardhan (19:00)
also encourages waterfall methodology within their agile work as well. So they have mixed teams of waterfall and agile because that's what works for them. This is what matters. So these are some of the newer things that I've come across way back from late 2000 or early 2010 where we talking just about agile and all of that. And to be honest, I also learned agile.

fresh at thought works in those days. And that was so pure agile. I still apply those principles. And I'm so fortunate I got to learn agile in those core days where they really followed it with the best practices. And I think those are some of my best lessons in my professional career, I would say.

Maulik Sailor (19:30)
Mm.

So let's be learned that. as you got exposed to all these frameworks and methodologies and ways of working, when you did your startup, how much did you actually transfer over to startup? Because a lot of times there's a saying that as a corporate, you're always making this strategy, you're getting strategy consultancy, and you're working on PPTs and all.

As a startup, you build a strategy and that strategy goes out of the way the moment you hear the first note from your customer or from your investor. So what's your take on that? As a startup founder, how much would you apply and what would be your take there?

Saumya Vardhan (20:32)
think, more like given I was fortunate to be on the both sides, building a venture from scratch, also run large scale program and also starting some of these large scale big programs company wide from scratch as well. My first thing is not just about a particular methodology, strategy or structure. It's about building a culture, right? That starts from ground up, know, emulating those values, creating that kind of team, which is high performing.

Maulik Sailor (20:54)
Hmm.

Saumya Vardhan (21:00)
and fast moving and trusting each other. When they trust each other, they would open up to new ideas, which is what we need to innovate, to continue innovating and also take risks, fail fast and get a faster move, pivot, move on to the new idea. That's the world we are in. And we need to build a culture through agile or an agile culture through these methodologies, frameworks, or whatever works for them. This is the key I would say is to have

to address these kind of challenges and gaps which are there for a startup versus a big enterprise.

Maulik Sailor (21:35)
Yeah. Yeah. And like, you know, I know a lot of times the startups as they mature, they try to become like, you know, it's very ironic, actually. The startup start really by taking a lot of risks, you know, execution over processes and so on. But as they mature, they become kind of a completely opposite. So risk covers, you know, everything done through processes and so on. And like, you know, the corporates

They are very much process -driven, again, very highly risk -averse, but they want to be more startup -like, faster to market, and for risk -taking, faster decision -making, and so on. So I always get, as you said, the grass is greener on the other side. I think between startup and corporate, it's also the same thing. The startup wants to go on the other side, and the corporate wants to go on the other side. anyways, just building, moving on.

from the overall programs to more about the teams, right? Ultimately, whatever you do, frameworks are there as a tool, the processes are there for you to get things done, but it doesn't matter if your teams are not really good, right? You've got to really work at the teams level, in my opinion, whether you are as a startup with a smaller team or an enterprise with a much larger teams. So, in your opinion, what is the right thing

right team size on both sides. I think that will be a natural, I think it's in my opinion is a normal curve, right? And there's a normal midpoint where you get best of both sides. So what do you think could be? I can tell you my side once I hear from you.

Saumya Vardhan (23:20)
Yeah, no, it's very interesting. It takes me to a mix of a consulting answer with respect to spans of control. And then it also takes me to the right skill set, ability, and mix of diverse capabilities we need on the team. In my opinion, I've found a team size, and again, it's very personal based on my experience, a team of size six to eight people is optimal because I think

Maulik Sailor (23:26)
Mm.

Saumya Vardhan (23:47)
And then again, you have to delegate responsibilities to a few folks and then divide the team in such a way that you have accountability across different areas. So I think with that kind of team as well, they can be bonding together because then you can create a culture of working together as well. Anything bigger than that, I've found that you tend to not have that cultural values that easily. For very high performing teams to deliver a political outcome. I'm very focused on that.

small piece of work that needs to be delivered or a think tank for the startup or a think tank for a big program or initiative to lead, right? This is what I feel 628 is the right size of the team. But again, depending on how big the scale and scope of the program is, it can go on to like maybe 100, 200, how much you want to scale. It can be thousand people team as well. But I think core to get started on something is what I would recommend 628 as a key force.

Maulik Sailor (24:44)
Yeah, I was going to say six, right? Well, for me, six is really the kind of midpoint. think eight is stretching too much for me, in my opinion. And I think if you start going, I would personally prefer a team of four people each versus a team of eight. know, personally, that's my personal take there. And again, you know, just building more on the team side. What do you think about the composition of a team, a good composition of the team, right?

Saumya Vardhan (25:06)
Yeah.

Maulik Sailor (25:14)
I think previously there was like a role of a product owner which was different than a scrum master and then you had your developers and then DevOps part of the team, not part of the team. The Web Analyst part of the team, not part of the team. You UX guys in and out, you know, sometimes. So again, you know, what do you think is a, again, there's no right and wrong answer. It's just an opinion here that, what should be the right composition?

Saumya Vardhan (25:39)
That's a great question because again the context can change for what we plan to deliver right for a startup. It's very different to You know an enterprise level team will be very different but on a high level I can you know share that where with my Experience I feel on a team a product owner definitely is important and then that product owner should be talking to the customers right? That's how you will closely link in the customer insights, right? That's

Maulik Sailor (26:03)
Mm.

Saumya Vardhan (26:05)
another that's an additional rule for the product owner. It's not just writing your traditional stories and specs and everything, but that one product owner will have to take that accountability of getting the voice of the customer. Right. Then I would also suggest we do need inputs from marketing and sales simultaneously. I would say if I can just divide like I do need point five, you know, one FTE, which is like point five of marketing and then point five of sales as well, because then you know.

Maulik Sailor (26:11)
Hmm.

Yes.

Mm.

Saumya Vardhan (26:33)
how they'll market, what the sales will be. And again, that's coming from entrepreneurship point of view, probably in enterprise, it's not the same. But I would definitely take those opinions. Very, very important to create those upfront to understand what you're trying to deliver to the audience. And then you obviously will have a mix of designer and then your key engineering folks as well.

And somebody who is a developer at the same time can be an architect as well. And this team should be very, very closely aligned to the leader or whoever is in charge of delivering this overall outcome. Because I think you need to always constantly stay aligned to that shared goal or vision that you have with rest of the organization or with the company that you're finding.

Otherwise, there's always a chance that this team can delineate to some other goal that you're trying to achieve. But that leader, that business owner per se, can pull them back in with respect to the goal he's trying to achieve, the OKR he has to commit, or anything that he's delivering to his customers or his audience.

Maulik Sailor (27:46)
Yeah, interesting. I think, again, my thinking has changed a little bit over a period of time. Previously, I would have a better specialized roles within my teams. Now, I kind of try to mix and match the skill set as well. So I had a separate DevOps team who was working with the product team on a separate basis. But now I kind of got rid of the DevOps team and pushed the DevOps responsibility within the product team itself.

I did with the UX guys as well, so I had a separate UX team. And then I tried to move some of the UX responsibility back into the product team itself. So the product team itself, they designed the UX implement and also do all the DevOps works within the team itself. The traditional developers actually do that. The traditional POs do that. So I kind of wanted to move away from being dependent.

on a single individual in my delivery teams versus having a set of responsibilities between everybody. even, you know, I totally agree with you that there needs to be one PO or a product owner or a product manager, you know, however you define responsible to build a roadmap and give priorities and inputs to the team. And at some point I actually tried to even remove that role and just got the teams to collectively

So I installed the tool. couldn't get the direct insight from sales and marketing team, from customer support and so on. So they can pretty much see why we are losing sales, why customers are churning, what kind of credits we are getting. And they can themselves prioritize on, this is the next most important thing that we need to do and so on. So all the experiments which I was able to do with my current setup, the current team that I have.

But I want to just say, you know, that was my take on how I wanted to get a better performance out from my team. know, flipping back question over to you, you know, again, maybe you can use your startup hat or the enterprise hat. What is, what would be a good high performing teams look like? You know, what kind of behaviors or attributes would you look for?

Saumya Vardhan (30:07)
Right, right. And I just want to add a little bit on the DevOps side because I think I've seen in a lot of teams in America that they already follow DevOps practices. So by default, like the developers are doing DevOps themselves. So we don't have specialized roles per se anymore. Like you may have SREs and some of those just for the infrastructure side, but otherwise DevOps is now built in the culture of the team. And that's where the whole agile transformation comes in as well.

So that's a little bit of difference I found in America with large scale enterprises versus, you know, in the rest of the world what I'd seen. And obviously I think things have evolved across the world, but this is one of the few things. yeah, going back to your question about high performance team, I think this is such an important and key for any success to the organization or the scope or the product that you're trying to drive. For me, think some of the key, I would say,

thing that I'll be looking at is, I think something you touched upon is like, you know, people who can roll up their sleeves and are and have the ability to take decisions as well, right? Like collectively, they can come up with like, database decision that they can take and suggest as well. They don't have to wait for, you know, a manager or somebody to come and say, yes, I want to take this decision like that. They come with the data, they suggest that

You obviously should have reviewers who can do that and then give them a go ahead. Yeah, that's the right thing because collectively you all agree using that data and experience. The other one to me is resilience because in today's time, just because you created something, product, you can't just be very attached to it. You may fail, it may not work. You got to go again, start from scratch, go back up. You got to keep doing that continuously over a period of time. You need strong resilience.

And then third is you should be able to trust your team so that you're able to delegate tasks with each other and within that team as well. So creating that trust is important as a leader. And some of that is a responsibility of someone who's driving this high performing team as well. While the team is delivering on multiple aspects, but like that culture, that trust should be created by that leader to make them strong together so that they all come

and sort of compensate for each other. And this is what my current team is at Yahoo, and I'm so proud of that because they all support each other. Everybody has very, very unique skill set, but they all work together and support each other. And even if someone's away for a doctor's appointment, I would even say they are, you should go for vacations and PTO without having to be disturbed that, my God, who's going to do this, who's going to do that. So you should have that kind of trust in a.

team that they can function on their own, even if one person's not there, they're able to deliver that. So that's where you need diversity, mix and matter skillsets. So these are some of the rules that I look at at high performing teams, right?

Maulik Sailor (33:16)
Yeah, no, interesting. You know, I, that is always there that, once you get the team in, you try to, you know, invite all those team culture and stuff. You know, what I found interesting is that when you're building the team, you know, when you're, say starting a new team is recruiting your first person, the second person, the third, and so on. You know, often people recruit people in without really understanding the makeup.

of your team. So let's the first person you recruit, okay, fair enough. You try to really see whether he or she can deliver what you want to deliver and the right way of thinking and so on. But the second person you recruit, you know, most of the people look mainly on the technical skills and possibly, you know, a little bit of problem solving and analytical skills. But what they forget to analyze is like, you know, okay, the personality, class of personalities, you know, their working styles, whether the new person will actually gel well with the existing one or not, you know.

And often there's an interesting research. About 30 % of that projects actually are inefficient, as in the teams that are working on it are not really properly formed. that creates lower productivity, slow performance, a lot of internal team politics, and so on, effectively ending up costing the companies. I think the global number is around like 30 billion or something. I can't remember.

But when you start looking into that more, what I understood is that when you're hiring the team members or when you're existing team members or when you're hiring for a new one, there are three parameters to that. Sorry, four parameters. The technical skills, what do they bring to the table? Their behavior, how they behave or interact with other people, like their personalities, their ways of thinking and all those things.

their working styles, you know, how they like to work. Some people like to work, you know, in a friendly, cooperative team environment. Some people just like to work in a silo, you know. They want to put their headphones in, you know, don't disturb me, talk to me via Slack, you know, don't even bother knocking on my doors. So they have a different working styles, which could conflict with your team. And lastly, their motivations, you know, what do they want to get out from this particular job or this particular project that they're working on? And...

Often when you're recruiting, people don't actually look into all those things. And as a result, they end up recruiting somebody. Somebody may be really good. Technically, everything sounds great on paper. But once they come in the team, they may not perform as well because they just find all these four parameters are not really aligned with how things are done. So this is something that we discovered as we started to build our platform. So anyways.

I want to move on from there and I want to focus more on ask you a few things about your startup. Why don't you tell us about your startup, the Uber for spirituality that you're working on.

Saumya Vardhan (36:18)
Yeah, and that's the topic I'm always passionate about. Great, yes. So I think I would now look back and say, shubhpooja .com, know, platform where you can get vetted and qualified professionals for Indian Vedic services, your Vedic poojas, astrology, numerology, vastu, taro, any of these other services well under one platform, right? That's, that was my vision.

to start it. And I think this was literally taking a 5 ,000 -year -old traditional practice from offline, as you know, right, like from streets and corners of India into an online platform. And this is where I truly learned digital transformation, transforming an ancient practice, bringing it online. When I started this venture, I do have to admit now that I'm talking to you after so long.

that I was starting when nobody thought that you can access spiritual services online, like a puja can be done online. I was going through the challenges in the start of like, how can you pay to God through credit cards? How can a traditional priest who's sitting in a temple have a job at a company? That's just kind of disgraced to this whole.

industry and all of that. would get questions like that. know, priests will get annoyed with me. Also, they would say, how can I start a venture like this, who firstly, I'm not even a Brahmin. Secondly, I come from, you know, you know, a professional background. They're like, know, nothing about it. You don't have a lineage in it, etc, etc. Those are the challenges that I to go through when I launched.

none of this kind of concept existed. I pioneered that across India and across the world, which is where I think we had some of this blue ocean strategy for spiritual industry started with this. So very, very interesting times. And as part of that, think my purpose really, and I still keep to that purpose for Shiv Puja is that I wanted a trusted platform for newer, younger audience like us, where they can actually get

The traditional Indian Vedic services through trusted embedded professionals at a fixed price, right? This industry had very price points, but I think it's what you see is what you get. I wanted that. wanted these services, something which is so technical and advanced in our culture to be able to be accessed globally, right? Worldwide through the right platform.

And also give a trusted platform for people to learn a little bit more about themselves. As Indians, we don't go to psychiatrists or psychologists, right? We go to astrologists for motivation. We go to pundits to see where are my good periods, where are my good points, phases, what can I take advantage with? I have this issue, I have that issue. And that really motivates all of us and puts us in...

Maulik Sailor (39:10)
Hmm.

you

Saumya Vardhan (39:30)
a great spirit, right? If nothing else, we always say it's the stars that's taking me down, but it's going to get better. We always like to hear that, you know, there's no, you know, there should be some sort of light at the end of the tunnel. And I think that purpose still remains the same, you know, and I'm so happy that, you know, after 10 years as well, Shubh Pooja continues to serve its purpose and has a special place. We are a niche organization to deliver these services.

Maulik Sailor (39:34)
Thank

Saumya Vardhan (39:58)
for people who value Indian spirituality services in the right way. And I think I wanted a math and a science -based platform. That's where I started all these scriptures and rituals myself, went back and learned revised Sanskrit again, looked at all those traditional books and created poojas from scratch, found professionals, all of that. So I think I want the world to appreciate and I want us as a culture to appreciate our very, very advanced

ancient Vedic practices.

Maulik Sailor (40:31)
I use Spirit Well yourself.

Saumya Vardhan (40:33)
I am, yes, yes. And for me, spirituality doesn't mean that I have to sit in front of an idol or a temple for hours, right? I think it's a belief that I believe in that higher force. And I believe in the planets as well. I believe in the energies. I believe in cosmos. And I believe in things can happen through manifestation, through the right sound, light, healing, all those energies that gets combined, for example, in a pooja to be able to, you know,

Maulik Sailor (40:40)
Mm.

Saumya Vardhan (41:02)
help you with that manifestation.

Maulik Sailor (41:04)
So I don't like not believe in it, but at the same time, I'm not like overly believer of that. But I have an interesting theory about that. You maybe stupid. I don't know. But effectively, like, you know, in our Kundali, you know, the birth chart, normally you talk about the planetary positions that, okay, depending on the what position they are, you get impacted by it and so on. But and I have a scientific theory behind that effectively in my, in my opinion.

everything around us, like, you know, the whole universe is kind of a electromagnetic radiation coming from one planet to another. And there's an effect of gravity from one planet to another. And it's true. So because of that positioning of those planets, you get those hidden forces, you know, and in my opinion, those are nothing more than gravity or the radiations that we are getting. And maybe we are not able to measure that right now scientifically, but maybe someday we will be able to. Right. And so, yes.

That's my take on it. That, okay, why would a planetary position will impact me or not or somebody or not, right? So I think that's my take on it. Maybe it sounds stupid, but...

Saumya Vardhan (42:13)
Yeah, yeah, mean, think about the high tides and low tides. Why does it happen? Because of the gravitational force of moon. If 70 % of our planet, Earth, can be affected with a smaller entity like moon because of the gravitational forces, think about what will happen to us. It is also creating an effect on our body. And that's what astrology, Vedic sciences, and Poojas are, that that's how planets affect us.

Maulik Sailor (42:22)
Yeah.

Yes.

Saumya Vardhan (42:39)
Every planet has a unique color, a property, a mantra. Just like how we have different personalities, you may like a different perfume, I might like a different perfume. Again, have different genders also, but within the same gender, everybody has different tastes and preferences, and that's how the planets are. And they create as a strong force in the cosmos. All of that affects us. So very well said, Maulik. I'm so glad that...

Maulik Sailor (42:49)
Mm.

Yeah.

Saumya Vardhan (43:08)
And I think maybe your Ketu is very strong. That's why you have your own philosophical judgment. That's what people with strong Ketu do. They are spiritual in their own way. They don't have to follow a traditional way, but they have their own scientific theories about.

Maulik Sailor (43:21)
So I'm going to reveal a secret today, right? This is for everybody who knows me, right? So like any Indian parents, when I was born, my parents got me, you know, my kundli made and so on. So this priest who used to live where I grew up wrote in my kundli that I will end up like, I belong to a very poor family, you know, growing up. I grew up in poverty. And he wrote in my kundli that, okay, this guy will end up going out of India, will start his business and he will have two martyrs, right?

And he also wrote that I might get, you know, I have a risk of water in my life effectively. And everything actually turned out to be true. I did not actually personally pursue going out of the UK like India. I never wanted to come to UK and somehow I ended up coming up over here. Similarly, I never wanted to do like, you know, double masters and I ended up doing two masters in degrees and so on.

And there was an incident where I nearly got drowned in the sea, right? So everything actually turned out true in whatever was written in my kundli. And this was written, you know, was born in 82, so it was written in 82, right? And I got my second master's in 2010. So, you know, I kind of think that, you know, if, and there might be a lot of fake people out there, you know, might be doing a lot of fake stuff and all, and there's no way to prove whether somebody's, you know,

real, you know, place or not, right? But I think somebody who knows their craft might be able to get some things right for you. You know, maybe it could be a coincidence, it could be an happenstance, but you never know, you know, but at least, at least for me, it has been true a things.

Saumya Vardhan (45:01)
done.

Well, I'm sure, Maulik, there's some science and faith behind it. That's why a 5 ,000 year old practice is still widely followed in India, right? We've had a lot of other ancient practices. It could have just died down. But there is obviously, and I'm just being very, very neutral about it, not being a follower versus the other side. There is definitely something in it. That's why it's still being one of the top.

Maulik Sailor (45:25)
Yeah.

Saumya Vardhan (45:30)
services or things that we do or it's part of our tradition and culture as well, right? It's been carried forward over generations. It hasn't died down, rather. I think it's only amplified and increased now. So I personally feel and I've learned it, there is math, there's science, there's obviously occur, there's, you know, a lot of other phenomena which are not explained by science right now because science is not that advanced. And I'm, you know, to your point as well, I'm hoping in near future, we might be able to see a lot better predictions.

Maulik Sailor (45:53)
Mm.

Saumya Vardhan (45:59)
Because this industry is also very individualistic, right? It's not like a pharma company that you put $5 billion on a product and there are like thousands of scientists just sitting and researching. There's no research like that. you make this industry like that, you'll be able to discover a lot of models and create those and follow that. But unfortunately, we don't have that kind of funding for it or research institutes where you can have free -flowing money and people are only researching to be able to find.

Maulik Sailor (46:02)
Mm.

Saumya Vardhan (46:29)
those kind of scientific formulas.

Maulik Sailor (46:31)
So, you know, that's something interesting about to me, right? You know, you're working full time at Yahoo. You're running the SuperJar. How are you juggling the two things? You know, are you trying to build a portfolio carrier here? yes, it's hard.

Saumya Vardhan (46:44)
I wish, wish, I'm also a mom, so that's also a big part of my portfolio and I have a toddler. So for me, I personally feel it's about like, what gives you mental satisfaction and also pleasure as well. I need to have both the sides for myself, right? Running and working in enterprise, large scale professional ventures is my...

full -time role, that's what I focus on. But on the side, because I started Shri Pooja, I learned all these spiritual services like astrology, numerology, Vastu, aura healing. I became a professionally qualified practitioner. So I derive joy in doing that on the side, consulting through those as well. So that's something that I do on the side that helps me kind of pursue both the sides again, mental and other side.

Some of the key ways and I would say I think it takes a lot of juggling but some of the key points I can say is that you have to have very defined roles and responsibilities from both sides, right? What are you expected in your limited capacity in any other venture even in an advisor capacity or as a mother as well, right? Like you got to define that very, very well. The second one is obviously have a little more dedicated time

being mindful about how much energy and focus you have on what. And third is delegation, right? Even as a mother, I realized earlier, I was like, I'm going to do everything myself. But now I'm like, you got to take advantage of delegating as much and as rightly as possible. It's an art to delegate as well, to get things done. And again, I think we are very, very fortunate that we are in this world where we have access to so many tools and practices to keep us organized.

using a simple thing like a Google Calendar or I would say, you know, Google or your Apple Notes. That itself is so powerful to keep organized and stay, put your thoughts together on the go wherever you are and using some of these automation tools, not just these basic ones, but other ones also is very, important to manage both sides for anyone. And I'm not saying just personally for myself.

I think I lost you.

Hi, I'm not able to hear you.

Maulik Sailor (49:26)
Sorry.

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