Did I make a mistake quitting Wrigley, I wondered, after I almost got fired at my first Google appraisal in September 2011. I had gone from being on the fast track to senior management with only three other guys in my cadre at Wrigley, to competing with three hundred candidates vying for a coveted, client-facing role at Google’s Gurgaon (now Gurugram) and Mumbai offices, to almost being fired by Google three months into the job. How the mighty had fallen!
Life on the Google campus was a dream. There is a reason why the company tops the employee-satisfaction charts year after year. Consider the perks—free drops and pickups, gym facilities with personal training, showers with solar-powered hot water and Biotique bath products, spa vouchers, access to the latest tech gadgets (whether for beta-testing or as Christmas gifts) and international travel to Google offices abroad. The cafeteria boasted a chaat counter, for crying out loud. And while I thoroughly enjoyed watching Lingaraju climb a coconut tree to serve us fresh nariyal paani, the all-day counter at my new job was a complete trip!
Yet…
My first quarter in Hyderabad gave me a reality cheque—not just in the form of lower pay but also on where I stood in the larger scheme of things. I had upended my career from Wrigley to Google expecting to be catapulted to a position where I could fully utilize my creativity in selling the company’s digital ad products. And spend the remainder of my waking hours sending emails to Larry, Sergei and Sundar about all the amazing ideas I had for them!
Why, for God’s sake, can’t we set alarms within Google maps—to make the phone ring when we reach our mapped destination!
After orientation, it dawned on me. I was one amongst hundreds of incredibly talented, hard-working and well-trained individuals who had been selected to do exactly what I was hired to do. I was no longer the management trainee, I was an account strategist. My job was to optimize AdWords accounts for major clients based in the US … on behalf of their Google Account Managers (based abroad as well). At least at Wrigley, I got to sell gum to the consumer. Here, my job was to optimize the Excel sheet that would eventually be used by my foreign colleagues to sell ads to clients.
Am I complaining? Certainly not. Very early on, everyone knew that I was that guy who asked a lot of questions after a brief or training session. In the most chilled-out office in the country, I stayed back till 2 a.m. because, well, clearly, I had something to prove (namely, that quitting Wrigley wasn’t a childish mistake). My new co-workers in Hyderabad were confident that I would ace my quarterly review.
Also read: Munaf Kapadia details his extraordinary journey from Google to Bohra food in new book
My very first Google appraisal was a video call with my manager based in Gurgaon. I was made to realize that while the company appreciated my sense of enthusiasm and my need to submit a hundred product ideas to Google’s product managers across the globe, they were dissatisfied with the quality of my work. By that, I mean the stuff I was actually hired for. If my ratings did not improve in the next quarter, I would be asked to resign.
As it turned out, the Excel sheets that I was sending my colleagues in Chicago were too basic. Clearly, I needed to focus on my core job before I could even consider doing anything else.
I wanted to continue working at Google more than ever, so the appraisal pushed me to work harder. In just the four months that I had spent there, I had already learnt a lot about systems, operations and sales. It was obvious to me that there was opportunity for professional and personal growth. So, I found myself incredible mentors within the organization to advise me on the quality of my work and to navigate the tricky rating and appraisal systems at Google. It paid off because, at the end of my third quarter, I was offered the much-lusted-after position of an ‘In-Market Account Strategist’ at the Mumbai office, a role that not only allowed me to directly sell ads to the Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI) sector companies across India but also consult with them on their overall digital strategy. The joy of educating the chief technology officer of State Bank of India on the potential of the internet, and to be taken seriously! The role allowed me to build castles in the air and ask others to construct them.
Through it all, the intrapreneur within me flourished. Thanks to a lot of support from my team and flexible HR policies at Google, I was also using my spare time on projects not related to my core function. These projects ranged from creating an unofficial team within the organization that volunteered time to consult with non-governmental organizatons (NGOs) on how to optimize their Google Ad Grants to a forum called ‘Ideafactory’ which encouraged all Googlers to submit their Moonshot7 ideas.
Born in Hyderabad, NGO Consultants was my way of merging something I was great at (AdWords) and finding a way to convert that into social impact. Basically, we were helping NGOs make the most of the free ad credits awarded by the Google Ad Grants programme. While several NGOs had won the grant, very few were successfully using it to their benefit. Our intervention would make them eligible for even bigger grants from the company.
Ideafactory, on the other hand, was my Trojan horse. During my first few months at Google, I had realized that it’s hard for a non-engineer on the lower rungs to gain the attention of senior engineers in the company. Imagine how many emails or suggestions these product managers get! I thought, if I start collating ideas from multiple Googlers, with a stamp of approval from senior leadership, then maybe someone from the L-team might actually open one of my emails and maybe, just maybe, one of my many ideas would bear fruit.
Working for Google gave me some of the best professional experiences of my life, but eventually, these side projects were unable to give me the dopamine fix that I desperately sought. Working a nine-to-five job as an account strategist wasn’t cutting it, even if it was at the best company in the world. I was looking to satisfy an entrepreneurial itch, and this led me to pursue projects in my personal time.
That’s how The Bohri Kitchen was born.
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The Bohri Kitchen or TBK, as I will henceforth refer to it, was a small food venture founded by my mother and me in November 2014. The word ‘Bohri’ is slang for Bohra, the de rigueur classification for members of our community.
The backstory goes like this. It had been over a year since I had moved back from Hyderabad to join the Google office in Mumbai, and I was the only Kapadia kid in the house. Both my sisters had settled into lucrative careers, married and set up their own homes while my older brother had immigrated to the US. Mom’s responsibilities weren’t as demanding as they used to be, and she now had a lot of time on her hands. She spent it playing Candy Crush and watching saas-bahu TV shows. She was on level #2535644 of Candy Crush when things finally came to a head.
One Sunday afternoon, Mom and I fought over the TV remote. Her saas-bahu show was getting in the way of some sitcom or the other that I wanted to watch.
The back-and-forth on who would control the television set that afternoon had one positive outcome. It became clear to me that my incredibly talented mother needed something more meaningful than these OTT shows to keep her busy. So, I made it my short-term mission to find her a better alternative.
I went for the lowest hanging fruit I could find—her cooking.
I thought, if I could find a way to monetize Mom’s amazing culinary talents, not only would it keep her busy and generate a small income for her, but she would thoroughly enjoy herself while doing it!
This excerpt from ‘How I Quit Google to Sell Samosa: Adventures with the Bohri Kitchen’ by Munaf Kapadia, with Zahabia Rajkotwala, has been published with permission from HarperCollins India.