Women are the epitome of emotional intelligence. They are the creator, nourisher, nurturer, and the pallbearer of mankind and Humane-Kind. They are the true philosophers. Whatever they touch becomes full of life and magic.
For example – technology. Before women’s entry into it, it was completely lifeless. And now, with their coming, even artificial intelligence feels like a smart being. That is women’s smartness.
You constantly get this feeling when you speak with Basudha Shrivastav Narula, one such smart technopreneur.
She is the co-founder of ExpressEarth Digital Services and Founder and Managing Director of Empfly Services Pvt Ltd, a bespoke SaaS company that provides customized business solutions. Before that, she has worked with Serco for their IT Projects and team leads.
She is a software engineering Diploma holder from GNIIT, 2006. Post it, she received her B.A. honours in English.
Later she did her Executive Entrepreneurship program in Entrepreneurial and Small Business operations, from the prestigious Indian Institute of Management Bengaluru (IIMB).
In a conversation with Insights Success, she spoke about her achievements, her plans and her future strategies to be successful in today’s digitally automated world.
She also told us more about her unique venture, Empfly. Below are the highlights of the interview.
Give us a brief overview of your professional journey at EmpFly Services Pvt Ltd.
The journey so far is very interesting and challenging. But, as the saying goes, “where there is a will, there is a way”.
We are moving forward in the positive direction, checking our product at each stage and taking customers’ feedback to make it even better.
Tell us more about EmpFly Services Pvt Ltd, its vision, and the key aspects of its stronghold in the global enterprise service and automation space.
EmpFly is a bespoke and young technology-driven company that customizes everyday solutions.
Our business solutions are specialized by industry and constructed for the cloud to enable a specialized problem-solving solution, networked analytics, structured workflow and an artificial intelligence-led user experience.
People are the single biggest influence on the success of any business, yet over 75% of companies do not use a digital solution to manage them. Our ambition is to become the category-leading work experience platform for companies in India and South Asia– getting people engaged and working as efficiently as possible.
With hundreds of companies using our platform in India already, we are excited to offer our solution across the South Asia region in the coming months.
Our flagship products – Attendance Manager App and Field-Force Monitor App – are solving the real problems in a company, not only in automating attendance through AI but also in increasing the productivity of employees.
For more info visit- https://www.empfly.com
From a business leadership perspective, what is your opinion on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the SaaS industry?
SaaS (Software as a Service) flourished during Covid-19, unlike other businesses. Lots of start-ups and companies gained customers and increased their revenue by 10X.
SaaS is taking over the cloud computing market. Gartner predicts that the service-based cloud application industry will be worth $143.7 billion by 2022 — a level of growth that will shape SaaS trends in 2021.
Technology always played/continues to play a major role in post covid scenario? Could you please share how non-technology domains managed to adapt?
Digital adoption has taken a quantum leap, at both the organizational and industry levels. In a recent survey by Mckinsey, in just a few months, the COVID-19 crisis has brought about years of change in the way companies in all sectors and regions do business. And this change is good without a doubt.
To stay competitive in this new business and economic environment requires new strategies and practices and the sooner you adopt, the easier it becomes to remain profitable in your business. We have seen how new departments are created in the business hierarchy to address the market, asset and fund allocation.
What efforts did you take during the pandemic to sustain operations and ensure the safety of your team at the same time?
The COVID-19 pandemic is propelling demand for touchless interfaces, accelerating the shift towards sensory interfaces and AI-ML technology. Every customer and employee touchpoints are likely to be revolutionized in a hands-free, screenless world of ambient intelligent interfaces.
Looking at the gap in the market and remaining innovative in our products, we designed successful touchless environments for corporates in Access and Attendance Management system with advanced roster system for get-tagging, which requires taking a human-centric approach, ensuring reliability, security, privacy and choice.
Our team worked from home in the entire COVID time, and we too used our own in-house technology to remain focused and productive in this entire phase.
Why is the team uniquely capable of executing the company’s business plan?
We have assembled a management team that can execute our business idea and create value in the company. This includes building out a minimum viable product, acquiring and retaining customers and creating a business that is sustainable long enough for the investor to get their money out.
We have a team experienced in building a business, experienced in the industry (or with the product) and strong character to withhold the pain, gain, passion and perseverance.
As an established industry leader, what would be your advice to the budding entrepreneurs and enthusiasts aspiring to venture into the SaaS industry?
Innovation is the main driver of productivity growth. With the changing environment and people’s mindset, it is even more important that we as business leaders should encourage creative thinkers and fresh ideas to come out of every phase of life.
The second is disruptive strategy. Through disruptive innovation, even a smaller company or a start-up with fewer resources is able to successfully challenge well-established organizations.
How do you envision further strengthening EmpFly Services stronghold in 2022 and beyond?
We will focus on penetrating the Tier-B cities and be available to them in the same space. We will also open our branch offices in five cities in 2022-23. We will keep on focusing on our innovative products and will add more features to make it more favourable for our clients to opt for our solutions.
What is your opinion on adopting gender egalitarianism from a business leadership outlook?
It is very important that we address gender bias now and not only say it but instead implement it either willingly or forcefully. We have women who have crossed their borders and evolved like an albatross and hence it is important that we give that due respect to them.
‘Women’, a very hot topic for every company, country, and individual. We women have been the subject of discussion for ages and there is no harm in the discussion, but all these questions we pose to raise, do actually being addressed even by women themselves? We talk a lot but do a little.
We never understand our priority and what we should focus on when family and work collide together- a very famous say. Work-Life Balance is the biggest challenge for women in business/Tech, no doubt 32% of women said that they don’t know whether Work-Life balance actually even exists?
Whosoever is eligible to apply for a job, or business must be given an opportunity regardless of gender, age and gap (break) year, especially in the case of women who sometimes leave their job because of marriage, settlement, abortion, pregnancy or child-rearing. If she is eligible to perform any task or role, then she should be given that chance.
We are proud to say that we have implemented this policy in our office and that’s why we are a 70% women-run company. Adopting egalitarian gender norms could benefit women’s educational and occupational opportunities and will also oppose the notion that men and women have innately different roles (i.e., women would essentially be more suited for homemaking, whereas men’s natural role is that of the breadwinner).
