H e’s the typical new-age entrepreneur – pedigreed degrees from IIT Kanpur and IIM Ahmedabad, a stint in a consulting firm (The Boston Consulting Group) before jumping headlong into the world of startups. Abhiraj Bhal, who co-founded hyperlocal services platform Urban Clap along with Varun Khaitan and Raghav Chandra, works hard but plays hard too – running marathons, sky diving, scuba diving and so on. From an HR perspective, UrbanClap is a particularly interesting startup as like Ola and Uber it epitomises the gig economy, with a lakh of independent service professionals registered on its platform. Also, its own 400-strong full-time staff has an average age of less than 24. His take on:

Managing such a young workforce

Given that the team is so young, traditional management principles do not apply. Ownership is at the heart and in the culture of the company. Everybody in the company gets ESOPs. Extrapolating the philosophy of ownership, no tasks are given to anybody. Smart people don’t want to be told what to do. They decide their own tasks. A simple example is in our customer support – we removed all limits on refunds on services and left decision-making to employees. Ever since we removed the cap, we find that the compensation we used to give has reduced. If you give independence and liberty, most people become thoughtful. We throw upfront leadership at our team. This means we have people who are just 22 and 23 who are managers. Finally, we keep things simple and straightforward.

Managing a gig economy workforce

One cannot apply factory se-tup principles in the age of gig economy. I would say there are three core principles. First, fully align with the goals of the service professionals who are upwardly mobile micro-entrepreneurs. So the commissions (they keep 80 per cent, Urban Clap 20 per cent) are structured in such a way that a beautician who was making ₹12,000 in a beauty parlour can easily make ₹70,000 a month.

Second, incentives are aligned to quality. You require a minimum rating to be on the platform. The minute your rating dips, you stop getting customers.

Third, we give our micro-entrepreneurs training and use the advantage of scale to help source cheaper supplies for them. Now we are partnering with NBFCs to provide them loans to buy their kits. Even if the service professionals are not on the rolls, one has to be inclusive in your framework. So we try to help with insurance and other issues. For example, when GST kicked in, online service professionals were taxed 18 per cent. We worked with NASSCOM and in three months got it reduced to 5 per cent.

Managing relationships – with co-founders and investors

Having faith in each other is key. It is four years in our journey and the fact that we know each other well helps in maintaining harmony. All three are equally invested and have equal shareholding, which too helps. Each of us sticks to our domains.

Thankfully, our investors have been mostly hands off. But we know our principal responsibility is to maximise shareholder value and we work towards that.

When to go public

I believe that every company should at some stage go public. Managing the expectations of four investors is not very hard. But to manage the expectations of an entire market, get scrutinised by equity analysts and everyone is a true test. We would love to go public. Not right away, but we are building towards that. Perhaps when our revenues touch around ₹600-700 crore.

A personal mantra at work

Discipline is very important to me. To run the company efficiency, I need to be disciplined in my lifestyle. I stress on the fact that everybody should work hard, exercise hard, get a good night’s sleep and try and eat healthy. I like to see people who are energetic and fit and come with positive energy to the office, and are not drowsy and lethargic.

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