Today we have selected Ranjana Thanvi to take her interview. She is the Founder and CEO of Memorres.
First of all, how are you and your team doing in these COVID-19 times?
India has been impacted pretty badly with the second wave of Covid, yet everyone is trying their best to help each other.
We are working remotely and have been managing the work really well. We are used working with clients globally since the beginning and we have remote teams in different cities of India. We certainly miss the one-to-one interactions, personal training, tea breaks, and lunch together, and visits to our client’s offices and vice-versa, but we are hopeful that we will be back together soon.
We welcomed new team members and have worked with great founders and teams who have not just fought with pandemic but also grew their business with innovation with the right growth strategy.
Tell us about you, your career, how you founded or joined this company?
My heart is all about design and usability and my mind is constantly thinking about simple technology solutions to problems I come across.
Started as an RFID Software engineer in 2005, I learned Asset Management with Maximo being the supporting tool. After working for 4 years in technology, I moved into management where I worked as a COO in a digital agency.
Being in the techno-functional domain for 10 years, a realization kicked in: to build something great every day with like-minded people that add value to the real world, in the world of B2B, B2C, and C2C, etc, we need companies that work on H2H – Human to Human grounds. I founded the company in Dec 2015 with a vision to be the best people’s company in the world.
How does your company innovate?
Memorres team innovates with simplicity using our core strength of design and technology. Any problem we address in our day-to-day life, be it given by our client partners or an internal one, our team with entrepreneurial spirit finds a solution that is simple and scalable.
We have an open environment that encourages our people to share and express their ideas. With the lean hierarchy model, the management encourages risk-taking and experimentation. Our monthly newsletters and slack channels share information within different units, allowing them to acknowledge and share feedback. We can’t stress enough that people at all levels of the business share responsibility for innovation.
If we come across a problem that not only an individual but a group of people are facing, we tend to solve that problem either by the introduction of a service or updating the existing business processes. Being in the IT industry, we have the advantage of extending our custom development services or products in Web and Mobile backed with Cognitive Cloud, IoT, AI, and RPA to innovate.
Memorres recruitment process is also focused on hiring employees, not with a list of qualifications, but with an appetite for creativity, learning, and innovation.
A few examples of innovation that we have done during Covid time and earlier is:
Building our own Design Kit to help custom designs process faster, building our own sensor POC, embedded it in chairs that sends a notification if you sit for more than 30 minutes or your posture is incorrect, automating our business processes that were repetitive and manual, like Monthly Invoices Generation, Integration with Accounting Softwares.
How the Coronavirus pandemic affects your business, and how are you coping?
Since we believe that businesses are made up of people, we have been focusing on how it is impacting people emotionally and financially. For our clients, we are ensuring the deliveries are as high quality and timely as they used to be before Covid. For our team, apart from the daily work-related stand-up calls, we engage them in activities that are oriented towards their personal, emotional, and physical well-being. Our activities like dancing donuts, virtual ice-breakers, virtual bingo, etc, and one-to-one messages and calls keep the spirit high.
Clients’ and teams’ happiness and satisfaction are the keys that keeps us going.
Did you have to make difficult choices, and what are the lessons learned?
During the pandemic, a few of our clients had to temporarily close their businesses which stopped the revenue for them. Since we commit to being the digital happiness partners for our clients, we continued providing our services to them with a revised payment plan that gave them time to pay for the services while still keeping their digital operations up and running. It led to a decrease in profit margin and cash flow troubles for our company, but we made this choice deliberately. We understand these decisions have positive effects because long-term associations matter over short-term money.
What specific tools, software, and management skills are you using to navigate this crisis?
The crisis has not impacted our preferred choice of tools/software since we have been using cloud-based solutions which are integrated with our processes. For regular communication, we use Slack, Teams, and Google Meet as per team/client’s preferences.
For version control, we use Github, for Project management we use Jira and Confluence.
Who are your competitors? And how do you plan to stay in the game?
We do not have defined competitors, however, there are companies that we follow. More than competitors, they are an inspiration. To stay in the game, we have been and will continue to bring value to the people and businesses we work with. We are continuously focusing on increasing the digital happiness quotient for our team and clients.
Our USP is domain knowledge, speed, and quality of delivery, proactive and open communication. We find simple and scalable solutions to the business problem, with supported wireframes and functional prototyping to quickly test the solution if it meets business and customer needs. We offer all the services that a business needs including Consulting, Strategy, Design, Custom Development (Web and Mobile), Cloud Services, and maintenance. Our different service models include Managed IT services, Staff Augmentation, Fixed and T&M Cost projects, R&D Sprints gives varied options for the clients to choose from based on their business needs and budget.
Your Final Thoughts
Memorres is proud of that infrastructure wise we were adaptive enough to work from home without any hassle. The pandemic time has demonstrated the importance of strong partnerships with clients, teams, and technology. We are honored to be trusted by each of our customers and continue to provide services to them. We are also grateful that our team has been working together in these challenging times. If any business is looking for services/collaboration or people are looking for work opportunities, we would be happy to connect with them and find a solution together.
- Spokesperson: Ranjana Thanvi
- Company: Memorres
- Website link: https://memorres.com