St5- Priti Agarwal On How My Employees Helped Me Pivot

1. ST5 | PRITI AGARWAL ON HOW MY EMPLOYEES HELPED ME PIVOT Have you ever had a brainwave and couldn’t wait to leave everything and start on it, only to realize that things didn’t exactly work the way you thought they would? A lot of times reality check, the actual implementation, execution, etc makes one realize that the idea needs tweaking, and possibly even a proper mutation for it to work. And through the journey, the end result may end up differing a lot from the initial seed idea. And that is imper ative. You have to be flexible like in everything else in life, to adapt and morph the idea in sync with reality. A stubborn approach to not deviate from it, ay not be the right response. Today we have Priti agarwal, who has lived the journey of going through multiple iterations in her personal entrepreneurial venture spanning a decade. By the by, we have set up the CrazyTok community to with a mission to deliver quality professional content so you can accelerate your career, grow your business and build wealth. If you want to continue the conversation and delve deeper into topics of interest, join us here on circle. www.crazytok.online

2. Key Points How was the implementation of The Catalyst started What led to the pivot How did the business model change Key Lessons and tips for pivot Show Notes Have you ever had a brainwave and couldn’t wait to leave everything and start on it, only to realise that things didn’t exactly work the way you thought it would? A lot of times reality check, the actuall implementation, execution etc makes one realise that the idea needs tweaking, and possibly even a proper mutation for it to work. And through the journey, the end result may end up differing a lot from the initial seed idea. And that is imperative. You have to be flexible like in everything else in life, to adapt and morph the idea in sync with reality. A stubborn approach to not deviate from it, ay not be the right response. Today we have Priti agarwal, who has lived the journey of going through multiple iterations in her personal entrepreneurial venture spanning a decade. Priti, I remember when we were in college together and fixated on doing our MBAs, how important it seemed to have a good corporate job. ANd you actually got into your top choice of company with HUL But just a few years in, you decided to leave it all and take a very brave decision of going on your own. This, a decade back when it wasn’t even a vogue. How did you do this? I remember in college, all we could dream about was the MBA. And then when we were doing MBA, we could dream about was how we could get into our dream jobs. And it actually worked for me, getting into Unilever because Unilever gave me a lot of autonomy in terms of what I wanted to do. “It’s a play that makes us do serious stuff better”. That’s the philosophy on which I have founded Catalyst, an experiential learning firm. My interest in people development started very early in my career, even before the entrepreneurial bug bit me, when as a sales manager and a leader at HUL, I pioneered and rolled out various learning forums for my team. I continued to mentor and coach peers and subordinates in my role as a strategy consultant at Accenture. But I knew learning had to be more self driven and immersive for it to be meaningful. This is the vision on which The Catalyst is founded. www.crazytok.online

3. So what were the dilemmas that you faced? I’m sure it wasn’t an easy decision in terms of implementation. In the initial years, I worked largely with MBA and Engineering colleges across India. I assessed the talent in these colleges, trained them on employability skills using game-based methods, and prepared them for large MNC companies which were not even visiting their campus. I know the version of catalyst now differs quite a lot from the initial version, and I commend you for being flexible to respond to the market and times. what led to a pivot? Was it organic or did you have to scrap and go back to the drawing board when embarking on corporate training? We did go back to the drawing board. In 2013-14, I really struggled with my original business model. I did not have money to pay salaries for 6 months. But one of the companies that I was recruiting for, PepsiCo, came back asking for sales training for their new hires. That was my opening into Corporate training. I realized it was a better market – better margins, better pay masters, and operationally, lesser hassle. So, we decided to pivot. We became choosy about the colleges we wanted to work with and instead focused on Corporates. It’s two parts. Now that we had to move into corporate training, the entire team had to realign themselves to the fact that we run on different markets altogether. And this had to overcome with transparency and help. So at catalyst, we’ve always been transparent. Everyone’s been very transparent about what their fears are and what their aspirations are and that really helped. www.crazytok.online +65 8245 0373