Hyderabad: In today’s time, people quite frequently change jobs or even kick-start their own startup in hopes of making an impact in the world. Be it startups or well-renowned decade-old firms, attrition has become a challenge for all.
To counter that challenge, the HR departments, around the world, have adopted multiple ways to make their staff feel valued. One of such ways is to leverage the company’s brand to help their staff get products at a discounted rate. For that, the company, despite their budgets, has to negotiate with multiple vendors making this a difficult road to go down. Vendors, on the other hand, saw approaching the companies as an expensive affair and were happy to delegate the task to a third party
Sensing a business opportunity, back in 2011, Partha Neog (42) founded Vantage Circle — which started as a shopping discount platform — to allow corporates to focus on their core business while outsourcing their employee engagement to a third party.
“Employees are crucial to any firm. These days both companies and brands are spending a huge amount of money to keep their staff happy but there was no logic behind their spending. Vantage Circle steps in here to allow companies to concentrate on their specialisation and rationalise their spending by playing the role of a mediator with the company and the brands”
Mr Neog, an ISB Hyderabad alumnus, was no different. Before starting his own business, he was the product head of 99acres.com and his experience there helped him understand the internet usage patterns of users.
He said, “My previous experience at other jobs helped me narrow down the scope of my business. I discovered that while there were multiple rewards programmes for consumers, there was no dedicated platform that helped businesses meet brands and vice versa.”
Vantage Circle has now tied up with more than 1,300 brands. However, like every other startup, it did face challenge during its initial days. “Smaller companies that were appro-ached by us initially rejected us outright,” Mr Neog said.
“The breakthrough came during one such interaction when we were directed to an Infosys official who was looking to upgrade from their traditional methods. From then on, we found it quite easy as inbound directions quickly flooded us,” he said. The company has partnerships with most of the top IT firms now. Going forward, Mr Neog said his company would try to focus on getting mid-scale firms sign up for its services.
