People in India generally switch on their television sets without knowing what to watch, claims Atul Phadnis, the founder of Whats-On-India, the country’s largest multi-platform (with a dedicated TV channel, web and mobile apps), multi-lingual electronic programme guide system that covers content on more than 550 channels and reaches more than 20 million set-top-boxes. Essentially, Phadnis helps people find content they want to watch. He calls himself a digital television evangelist and this religious focus has helped the television professional-turned-entrepreneur grow Whats-On-India into a 100-people venture. Also accelerating growth, Phadnis believes is his knack for getting blunt, honest feedback or what they refer to as BIH (Brutal Intellectual Honesty) in his office—from both customers and employees. 

I am not very particular about the time I wake up in the morning, so it’s anywhere between 6.30 and 7am. I don’t have to go through any morning rituals either, like a morning walk or hitting the gym. But I am a complete breakfast person. The first thing I need in the morning is a healthy breakfast, which usually means muesli and oats.

That is also the time when my kids are getting ready for school and I like to spend that time with them. Once they’re off, it’s time to catch up with the day’s news and e-mails on my MacBook Air or the iPad. I check if there are any urgent e-mails from international clients who might have responded over the night. I also make sure I go through the host of reports that our servers generate about all the digital media properties we own i.e. our web portals and mobile phone apps. These reports tell me which of our properties are performing well and which still need to catch up with our users. 

At about 8.30am or so, I get into my Maruti SX4 to be driven to my office in Worli via the Bandra-Worli Sea Link. It’s the most convenient route from my house to my office. On a good day, it takes me less than an hour to reach office. In the car, I usually have my laptop out to check mails or read articles online.

A principle I’ve driven home to my team is—work cannot stop. It has to go on, with or without anybody.” - Atul Phadnis

I reach office around 9.30am. It isn’t as early as I’d like though. The one thing I seriously envy about my friends in the banking industry is that they get to work by 8.30am in the morning. I’d really like to challenge myself to do that as well—come early when there isn’t anyone around. That one hour between 8.30am and 9.30am is the quietest time and it’s perfect to get all your thoughts in order. Otherwise, once you enter office, there are already a number of other things that demand your attention.

For instance, as soon as I reach my cabin, I’m off to checking trade journals, websites and blogs to see if there is anything interesting happening in the industry. I browse through them throughout the day actually. I have set alerts to keep abreast with the latest industry trends. Then I check my calendar to see what meetings are lined up for the day and see where else I have to be at different points of time. And finally, I check the deadlines for various projects and prepare my task list that includes everything that needs to be accomplished on that day.  

Everybody else in the company also comes in around the same time as I do. We are a tightly-knit team of about a 100 people and I am extremely close to my team. I allocate a lot of time to meeting with our different teams (technology, marketing, engineering) on specified days of the week. Some teams are smaller with just five people, and then there are larger ones with 20 people in them. I make it a point to rotate my time amongst them—to have both general and specific discussions about the products we are building, what we should be building, mistakes we might have made and the big achievements we’ve had. I simply love these meetings.

With What's On India, Phadnis helps people find content they want to watch. Reason enough f for him to refer to himself as a digital television evangelist.

When I am having these discussions, I make sure I catch up with people at their workstations. Instead of calling them up to my cabin or the office conference room, I prefer sitting with them at their work area because that gives me a very good feel of what is going on. I usually spend two to two-and-a-half hours with two teams on a day, on an average.

Being with individual teams on a rotational basis is the strongest aspect of the work that I do. There is a particular product road map defined for the company, and board meetings or quarterly reviews may have plotted the direction in which the company is headed, but there still may be confusion about the exact interpretation of the product among team members. The pursuit of that product plan through in-depth discussions and meetings gives me both formal and informal views of the weaknesses in the team or problems they may be facing from other teams. From a management aspect, that’s one of my core areas of focus. Someone may casually or informally mention a problem he may be facing thinking it’s a trivial issue but it may actually be a big hole that everyone else may fall into. 

I think my educational qualifications and professional experience (at TAM media research and Starcom Worldwide) have come in very handy to make this possible. I am an electronics engineer and my career expands in television and digital media. The Whats-On-India office is then a great mix of essentially two kinds of people—media domain experts or technology and software experts. My training as an engineer enables me to speak and understand what my software engineers are saying, and my media days ensure I can align very well with our overall understanding about the media industry and where it’s going.

After a good meeting or two with my teams, it’s time for lunch around 1.15 or 1.30pm. I am a big fan of Rujuta Diwekar, the renowned fitness professional. I actually follow some of her dietary principles every day. One of those principles is to eat something light every two hours. So I keep munching on fruits, salads or energy bars every two hours. I make sure I eat home-cooked food unless I am dining out with a client, which is when the diet goes for a toss.

After lunch, the routine resumes. The post-lunch period is usually when I step out for client meetings. I actively go out to meet our key customers because I measure success of my company in terms of the adoption base of our products. When you have a new product company, it really helps if your concept or idea or product is adopted by users. Everything else follows, whether it is monetary gains or the satisfaction of having a truckload of users.

People’s availability, presence, mood swings or health concerns are not obstacles to the progress of any project. The work has to go on and deadlines have to be met.

This is also the time when I am my most productive. When you have been at it for the amount of time I have, you can switch on and switch off moods with a magic wand. If a customer calls me, and asks me to showcase our new product to them, even if I’ve had a very heavy lunch, or not got enough sleep the night before, every cell and nerve in my body comes together to make sure I deliver a spectacular presentation. This is why I love these meetings. I feel extremely energetic and articulate when I am in front of a customer. I am very confident about where the discussion is going, what direction it is taking and what is being said. 

I am told that I am a good listener too which is probably why I can take criticism well. But I hate people being unnecessarily diplomatic. In fact, if I placed a new product idea to them, I would respect a customer who tells me outright, “hey, you know what, I don’t like it”. But what usually happens is, you have to start peeling the layers, almost like an onion, when you’re dealing with a customer. If you ask them, what do you think of the product? They will just say, “haan achha hai, good or nice”. But when you go on to ask “do you like this or that or what’s good about it?” they’ll say “well you know, actually, to be frank, I don’t like this feature or that part”. I prefer people who are straight-forward and blunt. It helps accelerate business. It’s a key philosophy that I’ve shared with my teams too. We call it BIH or Brutal Intellectual Honesty. If something is bad, it has to be said so. I ask my people not to be polite or diplomatic with their team members if they find something to be not as good as it should be. This philosophy has helped the organisation to mature and now even the politest individuals in the company have learnt to say—”I’m sorry but this doesn’t work for me”.

As a good listener, you listen to everything that comes your way as part of feedback. We are an in an evolving industry. The issues of last year are different from those taken up the year before, so it’s difficult to say which issues may concern clients this year. 

If something has been written about us or if a customer sends us a feedback through formal or informal means, we have built information systems that ensure I get to know about it. 

But when a problem is identified, we respond to them as a team, instead of me or the team handling it on their own. If it is positive, perhaps a cake is in order or I might take my team out for lunch. If it is negative, we figure out how to address the issue internally with our team and externally with our clients.

As the founder CEO, you have to do everything or at least have the knowledge of everything that goes on in the company. There isn’t anything that I haven’t tried my hand at within the company. But I am not good at everything, say coding or writing software. We have specialists for each task. But I have been involved in different ways with different teams.

I think work-life balance is crucial to keeping your sanity. I try to maintain it."
 -Atul Phadnis 

Another principle that I have driven home to all my managers is something we refer to as “with you or without you”, which means that work cannot stop, with or without a member of the team. People’s availability, presence, mood swings or health concerns will not be obstacles to the progress of any project. The work has to go on and deadlines have to be met. The media industry is fast moving, and in a niche sector like ours, reputation is paramount, so you have to keep up with the times if you want to survive. 

After an entire day of meetings with customers and employees, I leave office around 7.30-8pm. Some people are still in office working at that time. It takes me half an hour to reach home but I don’t go there straight. I first go and play badminton for two hours in a nearby club. I meet both business and non-professional contacts but we strictly keep the interaction to the sport. This is my time to unwind after a long day and I don’t think about anything else during these few hours. 

I think work-life balance is crucial to keeping your sanity. I try hard to maintain it. After a good game of badminton, I head home to have dinner with family. The kids are already in bed by that time so after dinner, I catch up on some television news. I don’t get enough time on weekdays to watch TV shows so I record to watch them on weekends. 

Till 1am, I stay in the small office in my house to send out presentations or write articles. Then I read for about an hour, mostly non-fiction since biographies, history and management books interest me. I am currently reading Pakistan: A Modern History by Ian Talbot. Even though I don’t get much sleep in the day, I like to keep it that way. Sleeping is such a waste of time!