Happy Employees lead to Happy Customers;Happy Customers lead to Happy Shareholders. In that order.
- Simon Senek

So, how do we get to happy employees?

To do that, let us look at the famous Maslow’s Hierarchy of human needs. It applies as much to our personal selves as it does to our professional lives and to customers. Human beings as employees shape the culture of the companies. That in turn decides if we have happy customers or not. Customers eventually decide which companies becomes successful or not.

Making employees happy

Frederic Herzberg has the dual factor theory which articulates employee happiness. This infographic depicts both Maslow and Herzberg’s theories beautifully.

The gist of both is that the basic table stakes have to be met. This is what Herzberg calls the hygiene factors. You don’t get on any “Best Employer” list without inspiring people. Inspiration needs purpose and an environment for people to show their true potential. That, Maslow argues, requires Belonging, Self Esteem (Recognition), and Self-actualisation. So, the first requirement for happy employees is the company having a sense of purpose.

Another critical aspect that affects people is growth. People want to grow in their professional lives. They want more responsibility, more autonomy, more recognition, more compensation and more skills!

Growth is the second ingredient of great company. As Eric Schmidt, the Former CEO of Alphabet, used to say, revenue hides all evil(s). Growth starts with lots of delighted customers and a real business. Growth makes people happy since there’s enough and more to do for everyone. Business not doing well is one of the biggest triggers for negativity to creep into the culture.

Having personally worked at 2 (Alphabet and Makemytrip) of these 9 companies, I can attest to the fact that both have inspiring missions and empowering cultures.

Making customers happy

These 9 companies have meaningfully touched the daily lives of 100’s of millions of Indians. They have materially affected the basic needs of all Indians - Information, Communication, Food, Shelter, Travel, Finances, etc. I would submit that all of us use one or more of their services on a weekly basis.

Makemytrip, Ola and Oyo have made travel accessible and affordable. Makemytrip probably enables over 10+% of all travel in India in some shape or form. Many of us would remember how one had to work with travel agents or in worst cases stand in queues for travel bookings in the past. India only had about 350,000 standardised 1-5 star hotel rooms a few years ago. Now, thanks to companies like Oyo, the budget hotel room inventory has arguably doubled across the country.

Ola operates in about 100 cities and does millions of rides every week. Even car ownership, and certainly usage, is being materially impacted based on a high quality transportation service. Grofers and Swiggy have made it easy to order food and get other tasks done. They do 100k+ tasks per day. Even at a conservative hour per task, and a 8 hour work day, that’s over 12.5K person days of savings daily!

Flipkart and Amazon have revolutionised online shopping. PayTM has made it easy to leave your house without cash or a physical wallet! Given our lagging physical infrastructure, they have transformed how we shop online, pay for goods and services and just live our lives. In addition to consumers, they have also enabled a lot of small businesses to enable technology and make a livelihood online!

Of course, Alphabet has truly organised Indian information and made it universally accessible. It could be Indian maps with Indian streets which have enabled so many businesses, YouTube for entertainment, Android which affects 100’s of millions of Indians, Search and much more. No wonder Alphabet has 7 properties with more than 1 Billion users each; I’m sure there’s more than a Lion’s share of those users from India.

These 9 Internet companies have clearly made both employees and customers happy. While they have been chosen by LinkedIn, I think they are reflective of dozens, if not 100’s of other companies that are doing equally and more interesting things.

The Future

So, what would such a list from LinkedIn India look like a 3-5 years from now? I predict that we will see many more product companies that will be serving the “higher” portions of the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

Here are a few areas that seem very promising. Thanks to the digital reach and public goods such as the India stack (Aadhar, UPI, Digi Locker, etc), I’m very bullish on financial inclusion. Much like 100’s of millions of Indians access the internet today, I am optimistic about seeing citizens get access to affordable banking, loans, investment, insurance, healthcare and other products. We are also bullish about seeing rapid advances in education to self expression through vernacular content, and more. Time has finally come to see many more Indian product companies go truly global. We hope to see them take on incumbents in the developed markets and also be the role models for the emerging markets that account for over 5B people in the world.

Here’s wishing many more successful companies that continue to take Indian customers, Indian employees and India to greater heights!

About the Author -

(Amit Somani is a Managing Partner at Prime Venture Partners, an early stage Venture Capital firm based out of Bangalore, India. Prime VP invests in category creating, early stage companies founded by rock star teams. Prior, Amit has held leadership positions at Makemytrip, Google and IBM. He is also deeply engaged with the early stage startup ecosystem in India and actively volunteers with iSpirt, TiE and NASSCOM. He tweets at @amitsomani)

This article was originally published on Linkedin