15 minutes with Punit Soni

One of the tweets of Punit Soni says, “We should make money. But we should also think through the impact our money making activity has on this world.” Food for thought for almost all the startups!

Punit Soni, one of the big names of Silicon Valley. He is the man behind products like Google News Archive Search, Google Newspapers, Google Magazines and Blog Search. He launched innovative features like Instant Upload, Mobile Hangouts, Nearby and Messenger. He is responsible for all things software at Motorola Mobility. Moto X is the brainchild of Punit and it was launched with a vision of setting a brand new mobile usage experience. Post his stint at Google & Motorola, Punit was appointed as the Chief Product Officer for Flipkart where he was responsible for all product initiatives across Flipkart.

If one were to ask me to define him, he is a person whose bio doesn’t seem to end. A person, who seems to be unapproachable. But as change is inevitable, my thoughts about him also changed when one day, I instantly received his reply to my email asking for a quick chat with our team, with a resounding Yes.

The Zify team had this rare chance to interact with Punit Soni. Mind it, he doesn’t like to be called ‘Sir’. And the next thing, he doesn’t like is to take credit of all that he has done. When asked, if he were to open a carpooling startup what would it be like? He answered saying that Zify knows the best how to run the business and he is a novice to reply to that question…. I was taken aback by his modesty!!!

Those 15 minutes were power packed and each and every thing said and discussed was worth remembering. But there were a few things that just got imprinted in my mind and heart.

“Companies are not in service of founders, they are not in service of employees, they are not in service of investors, but companies are in service of users.”

Some of the great companies have failed because they think too much about the product and the technology but they somewhere stop thinking about the users. This was the first lesson learnt. “Solve every problem and design every product keeping in mind the users and what they would have liked.” The second lesson learnt was to solve maximum problems using technology. Punit said that Zify is a technology and product company and it should never let it slip from its mind.

We have heard a lot of TED talks and have heard a lot of people speaking about do’s and don’t for the companies. But what Punit said next just made us realize that there is just one way to do things- THE RIGHT WAY. Punit said,

“Company should always try to maintain its integrity. The key to any good company is that it should not compromise its integrity. Though in tough times, a company might have to lose a part of its integrity but a successful company is the one which is aware of the loss and the one that makes sure that it will make up for it.”

During my MBA, a few courses taught me that, Positioning is the name of the game. And Punit reemphasized this by telling us that Zify should Position itself such that people don’t get confused and they understand the value proposition offered by Zify. According to him, Zify stands for three things:

• Carpooling
• Cost Effectiveness
• A means to meet new people

Working in a startup is thrilling and challenging both at the same time. Most of the startups, when get funded, burn money like anything to get noticed and then after a while they run of cash at the time of delivering the product and the results. Punit urged the startups and companies not to burn cash on advertising. According to him, in today’s time, there is no better medium than digital marketing like Search Engine Optimization (SEOs) and Facebook targeting to reach out to the masses.

After reaching out to the people, what does the company want to do next? Do something more with the Technology!!! And today “Artificial Intelligence” is in vogue. Every company wants to use it and enhance their customer experience but Punit brings in a very valid point — “India has a lot of cultural differences. Therefore, it is very important to have sophisticated data and only then Artificial Intelligence can be used.”

Towards the end of the Skype Session, Punit had just one piece of advice for Team Zify- “Try to fix one problem”. If you can fix the one problem, then you can rule the world. For carpooling, fix the problem for people staying in one road where it’s most difficult to get any kind of transportation. If we go step by step and solve one problem at the time, then sky is the limit for success.