COVID-19: Survival for the Fittest

We talked to Mr. Vinay Johar of RChilli on how they can enrich your global recruiting data to save time, and he had the following to say:-

First of all, how are you and your family doing in these COVID-19 times? 

Vinay Johar: I believe it was the toughest time for everyone, especially the starting months of the year. It was undoubtedly a panic state for all, but slowly everyone learned how to cope with this situation. At RChilli, we had taken immediate action and started working from home. We ignited all the core values to work hard to provide remarkable results. At the same time, we worked on our employees’ mental health. So, we started weekly social zoom parties and hired external consultants to cope up with the pressure of this new lifestyle. But now, I am happy to see that we are growing, confident, and focused enough to stay in the market.

Tell us about you, your career, how you founded RChilli.

Vinay Johar: I graduated from IIT in 1999 and worked for almost three and a half years in the industry. In the meantime, I visited Silicon Valley and observed that people see the opportunity in every problem. They don’t live with the problem, which was a killer instinct to start my venture. But my first venture was a big failure. I lost almost all my savings. I joined ‘B’ school, learned, and trained myself for entrepreneurship, and started my second venture. I was happy to recover all my lost resources with my second venture but failed to succeed in it again. I took an exit and started RChilli keeping all my learnings and mistakes in my mind. Today, RChilli has customers in 33+ countries, and it has been almost ten years. We are growing and giving tough competition to our competitors. 

How does RChilli innovate?  

Vinay Johar: At RChilli, we have two types of innovations: ‘Internal and External.’ The first one is our internal innovations. All team members have their tasks and KPI’s to deliver, but they have the freedom to innovate their tasks by bringing new styles or channels. I believe this freedom has pushed everyone to innovate something at their level. And the second one is about partnering with our clients. I’ll take an example here when we were launching our pricing page. We were confused, should we follow our competitor, or should we follow the market trend? Then we decided to request our clients and asked for their help in preparing our pricing page. They gave their valuable suggestions, and this is how we created our pricing page. This is how RChilli innovates itself internally and externally. 

How the coronavirus pandemic affects your business, and how are you coping?

Vinay Johar: Standing today, I can say RChilli has won the coronavirus. There is no COVID-19 impact right now. But yes, if I look back in the starting months of this year, we started getting cancellations. We could see the COVID-19 dip in our revenue, which was approx 40% within two weeks. But the team was ready and focused on facing this challenge. We changed our processes, did cost-cutting wherever required to cope up with the pressure. The RChilli unit decided that we would not ‘fire’ anyone at any cost. So, we fought back, changed our processes, and incredibly, everyone has adopted the change in less than one week. We covered our 40% loss in time, and today we are growing perfectly to achieve our yearly goals.

Did you have to make difficult choices, and what are the lessons learned?

Vinay Johar: Change management is always difficult, and we did it in one of the most difficult times. The truth is that it was stressful for everyone, including me, to adapt to this change, but we all did it within less than three weeks. On the other hand, the business was becoming demanding; we were facing cancellations; people were getting fired from their jobs. So, yes, learning was there. The first learning was that ‘Change can be done very quickly in a blink of an eye if you are willingly ready to change.’ The second one is we learned how to manage our stress levels. And the last one is important to every organization that we should be ready with our disaster planning no matter what the condition is.  

How do you deal with stress and anxiety? How do you project yourself and RChilli in the future?

Vinay Johar: I believe managing our stress is the one that we have learned in this whole pandemic. The best way to deal with it is to talk to your mentor, team members, friends, and family. Accept the reality and deal with it. I am happy to share that my team has adopted the change, and thanks to my mentors and advisors, who all are working with us no matter what. 

Who are your competitors? And how do you plan to stay in the game?

Vinay Johar: We have well-known competitors like Sovren, Daxtra, Burning Glass, Hireability. But staying ahead in the competition is not our motive. Our motive is to stay close to our clients and solve their problems. We are a customer-focused company. We work for our clients and build features according to their needs. That’s what keeps us floating in the market, and this is the reason our customers stay longer with us. 

Your final thoughts?

Vinay Johar: Long back, I listened to ‘Guy Kawasaki’; he said, ‘Change is the part of the business.’ If your business is not changing every six months, it is going to die. So, change is a must. It is good for the futuristic approach, sustainability, and for the growth of the business. The second is your internal and external stress; how maturely you handle those will affect your business. So, if you are focusing on all these no matter what, you will have remarkable results. Always be open to change if you do, nobody can stop you from achieving your goals. 

Your website? 

https://www.rchilli.com/