7 strategies that boosted my startup’s growth

Photo credit: Steve Buissinne.

I still remember early 2014 when Manisha and I started Loginext with a front office in California and a development office in India.

That was the time of ecommerce companies, cab aggregators, and the on-demand economy. It was also when operationally intensive businesses were selling (or at least getting funded) like hotcakes. At that time, we were able to gauge the need for managing the last mile logistics team and the field workforce that companies were struggling with.

Today, we’re third in the global logistics-tech segment, with a sizable client base and 200-member team across 10 countries. We’re also part of Alibaba Group’s portfolio of companies.

It has been an intense journey for me and Manisha, my co-founder. We’re building a great team, networking with industry heads, and being mentored by veteran entrepreneurs. We’re also mentoring many emerging entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs.

Here are my two cents on building a fast-scaling organization:

1. Sense of urgency

Our mantra is to work with a sense of urgency. Every member in our team is driven by a strong willpower to succeed and displays tireless work ethics. To scale faster, we accomplish every task faster than normal. Each moment is urgent. It pisses off some people and it’s not always comfortable to work in such an environment but, well, if comfort is what we needed, we wouldn’t have reached where we are today.

Being proactive and ever vigilant helps us stay ahead of competition. Here’s how we ensure that urgency is always instilled in the team:

• We clarify the consequences of inaction at the onset. These come in the form of competitors or upcoming events and come from the market or technology.
• A deadline is attached to every task so that the team is well-aware of the speed with which each task should be accomplished.
• Every team member is confident of each other’s capabilities hence, we constantly offer help to each other when needed.

Creating a sense of urgency means pushing everyone to do their best, but don’t turn these nudges into nagging. Instead, communicate honestly and openly, offer recommendations and resources, and always help.

To sum it up, here are Bob Procter’s words: “Everyone should have a sense of urgency—it is getting a lot done in a short span of time in a calm, confident manner.”

2. Automation to improve efficiency and productivity

The teams at hyper-growth companies must wear multiple hats—right from managing finances to the sales and marketing, to building entire product modules single-handedly, and everything in between. The responsibilities are endless.

While the time of every team member is best spent on serving customers and building new technologies, a lot of time is spent on small but important tasks that are necessary to run the business smoothly. We’ve automated several of them and this allows our team to focus on improving efficiency and productivity.

For example, we learned that successful marketing does not mean setting it up on auto-pilot mode. Automation is about creating a bigger impact, not about doing less. A marketing automation software is not a silver bullet that solves all your problems. It rather “streamlines, automates, and measures marketing tasks and workflows to increase operational efficiency and grow revenues.” We have literally followed this article to automate our emails, customer engagement, NPS measurements, and end-to-end marketing tasks.

3. The power of a lean team

4. Getting out of the comfort zone

5. Productivity

6. Mentors

7. Be critical and learn to say no