Ravi Shankar — Dragon #14

Ravi’s built and managed gargantuan marketing teams across multiple markets with brio — and it’s no coincidence.

I’ve never seen Ravi come to a meeting without two things: data, and someone from his team. I honestly think a lot of his success boils down to his ability to have strong marketing relays within his organization, as well as being extremely number driven. From AirAsia to Carsome, he’s built incredibly successful teams whose results speak for themselves — and that’s no coincidence.

What’s an unusual fact or story about yourself that not a lot of people know?

What drives me is FOMO; Tech FOMO, Marketing FOMO, Culture FOMO, Life FOMO. FOMO pushes me to learn more. FOMO not curiosity, FOMO pushes me to be a generalist.

On a personal level, I don’t have any siblings. I wish I had one.

Is there one thing about your morning routine that you can’t live without?

A good cup of morning Indian milk tea (chai) of the house.

What books have influenced your professional life the most and why?

The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz.

If there is one book that kicks into your conscious and helps you make tough and right decisions, this is that book for me.

People don’t believe me when I say this book helped me as a people manager and a leader, coz most of them see this as a start-up story that CEOs should read and get inspired from, but not for me.

This book taught me there is no easy way to make hard decisions and the value of culture; I used to take for granted.

What quality do you look for when hiring someone for your team?

I balance my team with 20% specialists and 80% generalists.

The 80% — I’d hire, If I think that this person is gonna leave the organization immediately after they realised that have learned enough in the place. Generalists can’t keep doing the same thing for a very long time.

The 20% — must be specialists in their scope, but always react/change the way they for macro reasons around them, not micro in their specialty. They can only reach the local maxima unless they are trying to hit the global maxima.

What’s the worst advice someone’s ever given you?

Be aggressive, go get what you want, you have to grab what is yours.

Obviously context matters, but this never worked for me, it was never sustainable.

Is there anything that has improved your life since the very first lockdown? It could be an investment of money or time, or a new habit, a gadget.

Started appreciating fresh air and sunlight more. And now, I try to go for more.

Picked up pen spinning. (tip: don’t practice with an Apple pencil)

The gadget is reMarkable 2, a digital notebook with no distractions, that doesn’t even have a backlight, and closest thing to writing on an actual paper.

What do you do when you feel stressed and overwhelmed at work?

Write. People think alcohol will take the unwanted thoughts out of your mind, I think putting it on a paper (or digital paper) is more effective. Writing calms me down.

If you were a marketing tagline, what would it be and why?

Tech people in marketing are underrated.

The amount of efficient and sustainable I achieved grew like a rocket when I started to hire tech people in marketing. If you don’t have a tech person in your marketing department or if you don’t know what to do with them, you are not doing it right.

Where can people find you?

@ravisbook, I try to keep my social handles consistent.