Bigger mandates, larger impact, and great work culture — these define Praful’s journey at UC
Meet Praful Parakh, who has been with us for 3 years now.
Praful Parakh, Director — Product, joined us at the peak of Covid — 19 in the month of April 2020.
In his current role, Praful leads the technology and product behind UC’s post-booking journey. His responsibilities include overseeing the service professional’s app, ensuring SOP compliance, and quality of service delivery. Apart from this, he also heads post-service support, refunds and warranties. Prior to this mandate, he worked on the customer app, where he played a pivotal role in revamping the whole Customer Journey.
When he is not working, he likes to keep moving. He is a long-distance runner and a triathlete. He is also interested in photography and maintains a photo page on the side. Additionally, he has donned the most important role in his life — that of being a parent to an 18-month-old daughter! Praful likes to spend most of his time outside work, learning from his daughter and striving to be a better father.
Praful is one of our top rated people leaders. He is easy to communicate with and consistently motivates his team to improve and succeed.
Read on to understand how Praful leads and motivates his team.
What was your journey to joining Urban Company, and how have you grown since joining?
I graduated from the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore in 2017, after which I worked as a Consultant at BCG, India for 3 years. I also worked at Texas Instruments for 2 years prior to my Business School, where I published a patent. An engineer and techie at heart, I always wanted to build something new and innovative. Tech-first consumer facing start-ups always intrigued me. Hence when the opportunity to work at UC as a Product Manager came about, I was excited!
UC is the only full-stack service marketplace that provides services at customers’ homes while providing an unparalleled experience. Hence I saw this as a great fit to my ambition and joined right in the middle of the pandemic, in April 2020. Initially, I was entrusted with building products for a few online categories that we were planning to launch during the lockdown. Post that I worked as an Individual Contributor (IC) in building the pricing, discounting and storefront features for the UC customer app. I also worked on revamping the customer booking journey.
Since then I have grown to lead 3 verticals in product today — Post Booking Delivery, Support, Warranties & Refunds and Product selling Business.
Bigger mandates, larger impact, and a great work culture. These are the three words that define my 2.5 years at UC.
What is unique about your team here?
There is healthy competition. I always feel challenged by my colleagues in terms of thinking/execution and hustle where the ultimate goal is to make a win-win product together. Getting good-at-heart, down-to-earth and really smart people is very difficult.
The team here is supportive, ambitious and sharp. All at the same time. This is a deadly combination.
This culture is what defines my team and working style as well. In my team, each member is empowered to do their best and own the failures and successes of things that they do. All members treat each other with respect and empathy. The concept of hierarchy that at times hinders growth and grooming of members, is non-existent and the team sees each other as enablers and mentors.
What is the most common challenge that managers face while leading teams?
Fragmentation, team development and motivation. In my experience, moving from an IC role to a Product Leader (PL), there is a huge canyon which can make you fall right in. Great ICs may not be great PLs and vice-versa. There are typically two leadership styles prevalent — Directive Leadership and Supportive Leadership. The first is where the leader shapes and almost controls the vision, thinking, mandate and execution of the team. Latter, relies more on developing the team and empowering them to drive the vision for their areas.
I like to follow the latter approach, with a little bit of the former, when needed. Hence by virtue of the same, having multiple mandates and all at different levels of execution, it takes an immense amount of power to be able not to force your opinion but also be on top of what is going on in each area. Along with this, since supportive leadership entails grooming, leaders are typically pressed for time to be able to balance the execution of multiple mandates while still being able to give the team enough ownership and time to develop and grow.
Whenever this balance is not achieved, you see teams either being controlled centrally or the decision-making becomes very slow.
What’s your personal mantra, and where did it come from?
Lead by example and with trust — Trusting your team and each member to deliver their best, is what I have always found to be working for me. I learnt this from a conversation I was having with an Indian army veteran, who said something really profound when I asked him “What do you think keeps the soldiers motivated to work in the most difficult situations? I assume it is love for the country.” He responded — “Yes, all soldiers are intrinsically motivated to be ready to sacrifice life for their country, but they also do it for their regiments and their commanders. The commanders trust and always have soldiers’ back no matter what, and the soldiers trust them back and are ready to move mountains for them. For soldiers to trust the commander, it is also necessary that he should lead by example. They should be able to look up with respect to the commander and that can only happen if they demonstrate the values that others are expected to.”
This statement was really heartfelt. It helped me realise that as humans we are motivated not just by money or other material things, but by the purpose, the team and the trust/camaraderie we share with them!
What is a piece of advice you would give to new managers at Urban Company?
Trust people and they will do wonders. Trust them to do good work and back them when they make genuine mistakes. Always be invested in their growth.
As a leader, you should trust the team to be their best version and you should always be the best version yourself. A team with no trust on each other is no team. This trust has to flow top-down, if you want the team to trust each other, you need to trust each one of them.
You also need to lead by example- if you want the team to follow a certain principle — say customer centricity or bias for action — you need to demonstrate them too.
As leaders we have the responsibility and an opportunity to shape the team culture and behavior. This is a long and patient journey and one that is truly fulfilling.
Sounds like fun?
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