Skip to main content

Team & Culture Building @ Gozoop

Rohan Bhansali, Founder of digital marketing firm Gozoop, shares interesting HR practices at his company in an interview/profile at TheRodinhoods.com:

Culture wise: These are the things we do. All may not be unique but they make our culture unique.

1. Every Saturday the team comes together (no matter how busy they are) and we do crazy things – Idli eating competitions, back to school drawing competitions, ragging new recruits, dancing to 90’s Bollywood tunes, Dumb charades, etc. Last week we played passing the parcel.

2. Gozooper of the Week – Every Thursday, an email is sent to the entire team mentioning one odd (or weird) fact of a team member. The team then has to guess who the person is. Great way to get to know each other.

3. Every year we write a hand written letter to the parents of our most dedicated and earnest team mates highlighting their achievements. There is no prouder moment for parents than hearing about their child’s success.

4. We have weekly Foosball mash ups where we bring together as a team, the people who don’t work together on a day to day basis. The winning team gets a Bournville ‘cause you can’t buy it, you have to earn it!

5. A certain percent of our profits our committed to our CSR. The team together decides the cause or foundation that we donate to.

6. We definitely have an open door policy but once every 4 months we choose a random set of 10 people who are literally “forced” to speak up and suggest at least 2 improvements or suggestions to our work, culture or process.

7. GZ Good Times – Every month, the guys who consistently reach office on time are treated to something nice. Last Saturday this set of guys went for The Dark Knight rises.

8. Our HR head Bansi is our “Happiness Officer”. She sometimes surprises a randomly picked team member with a cupcake on their desks when they are back from lunch.

9. While hiring, the focus is first on soft skills. We constantly ask, “Will he/she add to and fit into our culture and happiness?”

10. Our FB page speaks more culture and less digital marketing.


Arun Natarajan is the Founder & CEO of Venture Intelligence, the leading provider of data and analysis on private equity, venture capital and M&A deals in India. Click Here to learn about Venture Intelligence products that help entrepreneurs reach out effectively to the investing community.

Popular posts from this blog

How I Raised Funding - Priyanka Agarwal, Wishberry

You have to be confident and shameless while crowdfunding. Priyanka Agarwal, Wishberry shares on how to succeed in crowd funding with Venture Intelligence in this  interview. Priyanka also candidly shares how the team built Wishberry, raised funding from top angel investors like Rajan Anandan, on pivoting, and difficulties in raising capital for entrepreneurs operating in niche spaces not chased by VCs. Q: What does Wishberry do? Priyanka Agarwal : In its latest avatar, Wishberry has pivoted into crowd financing of low budget films (INR 1-5 Cr). We are essentially trying to create an internet platform for investment opportunities for HNIs in films including Marathi, Tamil, Kannada, or films targeting the global diaspora. L-R: Co-founders Anshulika Dubey & Priyanka Agarwal, Wishberry Given that you are building a marketplace, how did Wishberry solve the Chicken and Egg problem? Beyond the “all or nothing” model what did Wishberry do to pull in more arti...

Profile of Career Forum founder

The Starship Enterprise column in The Economic Times (not available online), featured Sujata Khanna of entrance exam training institute, Career Forum. The company, which started with just seven students in Pune, now covers over 39 cities reaching over 15,000 students. ...The most important milestone I think was in 1995 when we decided to incorporate Career Forum into a Company. This brought in a lot of professionalism and we also went for expansion. ...Strong technical network is our unique selling proposition. We have a strong ERP system running across all centres in all areas of business from distribution to logistics... Arun Natarajan is the Founder & CEO of Venture Intelligence, the leading provider of information and networking services to the Private Equity and Venture Capital ecosystem in India. View sample issues of Venture Intelligence India newsletters and reports.

Should VCs buy out angels?

Interesting discussion at VentureWoods between Deepak Shenoy and Roshan D'Silva on this " perennial topic ". Here are their first posts (in the comments section): Deepak Shenoy said, Alok, true - there is reason to think about why one wants to exit. As a stock market investor, I have made decisions to sell companies at (say) 400% profits, when the company went on towards 1000% of what I bought - yet, I wasn’t sulking in a corner. Because a) 400% is pretty nice and b) I’d reached that comfort level of profits. Angels may not want to stay the distance, which could be much longer than their cash needs, and if the current valuation is attractive enough for them to exit. As individuals I would imagine that angel investors are the kinds that put in Rs. 10 lakhs to Rs. 50 lakhs in a business - and honestly, there are a number of such people who have this kind of cash lying idle in bank accounts (idle = they don’t need it right now). Such people can be angels, but they won’t b...