When I started AI Palette, I had never managed a single person. A few years later, we had a team of more than 100.
I was learning how to lead while building a company. I had no management experience to draw on, but I knew that a culture would develop whether we paid attention to it or not. I wanted us to have some say in what it became.
My co-founder, Himanshu, and I agreed early on about the kind of team we wanted: diverse, self-motivated, comfortable taking ownership, and willing to push boundaries. Smart people who were also humble.
Those were easy things to agree on. Making them part of how we worked took more effort.
Much of it started with a simple observation: people watch the founders. How we treated someone, handled a problem or responded when things went wrong would tell the team what was acceptable.
The everyday things mattered
I was usually the first to arrive and the last to leave, whether I was in Singapore or Bangalore. Early mornings gave me time to work before the meetings started. Staying later helped me finish things so I could take less work home.
At the time, I felt I had to put in that effort before I could ask it of anyone else. But I didn’t expect people to keep my hours. I didn’t question someone for arriving late or leaving early. The expectation was to get the work done on time.
There were smaller things too.
I made my own coffee or tea. I eventually made an exception in Bangalore because our office boy made excellent tea.
If the cleaner hadn’t come and the bin needed emptying, I took out the rubbish. If a client left coffee cups behind, I washed them after the meeting. It seemed unnecessary to find someone else to do something I could do myself in a few minutes.
These were ordinary tasks, but they made an expectation visible: if something needed doing, you could take responsibility for it without waiting for someone else.
The first hires helped build everything that followed
Our early employees shaped the company as much through their behaviour as through their work. This applied to junior hires as well as leaders. They became the people new joiners watched and learnt from.
To ensure we had the same high quality of hires, we made the final interview a “culture fit” round. I attended each and every culture fit round alongside the hiring manager and another leader, with our HR head joining later as the process evolved.
We asked open-ended questions to understand how someone thought. There weren’t necessarily right or wrong answers.
The evaluation form ended with two questions:
“Would you be excited to work with this person on a Sunday?”
“Should we hire this person?”
Each had three possible answers: yes, no or maybe. A “no” from any interviewer on either question meant we wouldn’t proceed, even if the candidate was technically strong.
The Sunday question was our attempt to get beyond whether someone could do the job and ask whether we wanted to work alongside them. It wasn’t an expectation of weekend work. If we were not excited to work alongside someone we won’t be able to build a cohesive team.
Listening came with an obligation
I wanted to know the people I worked with beyond their roles. What they did on weekends. Where they were planning their next holiday. How their children were doing, or whether an ailing parent was getting better.
Those conversations helped us understand one another and work better together.
I sat in the open office with the team. I didn’t think being CEO entitled me to a separate space or should make me harder to reach.
I would like to believe I was approachable. People from our CPO to our security guard came to me with suggestions about how we could do things better. I welcomed that. It meant they cared enough to think beyond their immediate responsibilities.
But hearing a suggestion was only the beginning. I had to act on it or explain why I wasn’t going to.
If someone took the trouble to speak up and then heard nothing, an open door wouldn’t mean very much.
A promise had to mean something
In the early days, people weren’t joining us because we had a famous brand. They were joining because they believed in what we were trying to build and in the people asking them to help build it.
That made our credibility important.
I couldn’t promise what the market would do or how the company’s future would unfold. But when we made a specific commitment to someone, I felt responsible for keeping it, whether it was written down or not.
Once, a developer told us his manager had promised him a bonus. The manager had left before the appraisal period, so we had no way to confirm the conversation.
We honoured it.
The promise had been made by someone representing the company. Their departure shouldn’t automatically make it disappear.
People needed time together outside the work
We spent our days identifying food and beverage trends, so eating together became a natural part of our culture. Meals also gave me a chance to talk to people without a work agenda.
We organised masterchef competitions, jamming sessions and sports. The ritual people looked forward to most was AIPL, our annual cricket league.
It started when we returned to the office after Covid. People were working for the same company but barely knew one another.
We put together a two-week tournament with teams that included everyone. What began as a way to bring people together became something the team looked forward to each year.
It gave us a shared experience outside projects, meetings and deadlines. Over time, those experiences became part of what it felt like to work at AI Palette.
Growth had to be part of the job
I have always believed that people want to grow in two ways: financially and through what they learn.
From the early days, even when money was tight, we offered a learning benefit. Employees could take a course and have the company reimburse it. It was one expense I was always happy to approve.
We introduced it because I wanted people to keep developing their skills. Over time, I also came to see its value in retention. People had another reason to stay when they felt they were growing with the company.
I made plenty of mistakes along the way.
Sometimes I waited too long to act when someone’s behaviour was hurting the team. In some hiring decisions, I let other people’s confidence outweigh concerns I hadn’t properly resolved. I learned that the gut is generally right and I should pay more attention to it.
As we grew past 100 people, I could no longer give everyone the time I had when we were smaller. That was one of the harder adjustments. I couldn’t build every relationship myself.
The foundations we had put in place helped us through that change, and through some of the most difficult phases of the business.
At the beginning, much of the culture depended on what Himanshu and I did. As we grew, it depended increasingly on what people learnt from one another.
That was the real test: whether someone would take responsibility, listen properly or honour a commitment without either founder needing to be there.
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