Interviewer: How did you come up with the idea of your company? What was the process behind the creation of this company?
Ms. Sunanda Verma: We believe that when like-minded people with the bigger intent come together, they can achieve much more and can create wonders. We wanted to give this thought a format & platform which led to the inception of The Daftar. The idea is to create a community of like-minded people from diverse backgrounds who work together in an inspiring environment and collaborate to achieve bigger goals.
Our purpose of creating the community, the vision of a million co-workers, witnessing the growth of our community members, aiding the fulfilment of dreams of our team members … all this topped by our freshly brewed cuppa of coffee makes us strive and hustle each day, every day for the cause of Coworking!
Interviewer: What steps did you take to make your company stand out in this vastly competitive field?
Ms. Sunanda Verma: One spends almost one-third of the life at a workplace and our idea is to make this time happy and fulfilling. We invest a lot of our time and thought process around how to create an amazing member experience at The DAFTAR. We constantly strive to make our members’ lives more meaningful, productive & balanced by giving them the best services possible, organising different types of workshops & events, having strategic tie-ups and associations so that they get time to unwind, relax and get to know each other better.
Interviewer: What are your core values? What measures do you take to stick to your core values?
Ms. Sunanda Verma: Our core values are:
· We LOVE to brainstorm ideas
· We ASK questions
· We HELP & ask for Help
· We are SOLUTION driven
· We are always on a LEARNING MODE
These core values have come from the cofounders and are intrinsic to them as they live them day in and out. Whenever, a new team member joins us, we ensure that we communicate and explain our values in detail so that they can connect with them and live by them too. They act as a rulebook for us to make decisions, identify new opportunities and define our conduct as a whole.
Interviewer: What are your future plans in order to expand your company further? What new things do you plan to do?
Ms. Sunanda Verma: We are expanding, we are continuously becoming bigger & better. Very soon we will share the news of our two massive upcoming locations in Pune. This year we have plans of expanding to 2000 seats in Pune and then taking it to 5000 with expansions into other cities of India and abroad.
Interviewer: What advice would you give to the up and coming entrepreneurs and small business corporations in order to help them grow?
Ms. Sunanda Verma: All entrepreneurs should learn to experiment, take risks, continuously evolve with time and most importantly learn to embrace the failures. The failures should be taken as a learning of something that doesn't work rather than a reason to quit. Challenges are bound to come, you will always have peer pressure, family pressure, market conditions and what not... just consider that failure is an integral part of this entrepreneurship journey.. you have to keep moving forward, keep doing great work and everything will eventually fall in place.