Startup Summit Live hosted an online entrepreneur summit from 24th-26th July 2020. The event hosted the eminent entrepreneurs from esteemed startups who presented their views about strategies, funding, branding and setting up your dream business. 

A session ‘Ask Me Anything’ was hosted by Aloke Bajpai, Co-founder & CEO of Ixigo on 24th July 2020. The discussion was about his startup journey, employ management and how the company is holding itself together in COVID crisis. 

Sharing his journey and motivation for the Ixigo startup, Mr Aloke said “the idea was to build a more customer-friendly website. When we saw the Meta search model back then, we found it was a lot more beneficial for customers, it would help them save time and money by finding them whatever the best deals are”. 

On being asked about the survival during three crisis during the journey and still becoming profitable and keep growing, he broadly stated, “back in the day they were compromises, later on, they became our competitive advantages”. He also drew attention to the fact that many startups forget that by being small they can use it to their advantage, they can forge their team as their family, also that we should not hide bad news from the team and let the bad news travel fast. 

Speaking about the employees still working with him even during the heavy pay cut during COVID and presence of other opportunities in the market, Mr Bajpai told that even during good times, how you take care of employees is the reflection of what kind of culture you end up building, ensure that the team is happy so customers are happy. Most of the time employees take ownership of problems and come up with new ways of solving it. “I’ve always tried to create an environment where people have empathy and they can share their problems openly”, he stated. 

“Giving more ownership to any employee definitely sends a signal that you are willing to take them along and give them a share of upsides, given that they sacrificed during a hard time”, he concluded.