Following is an email I sent to the entire Pricebaba team last year. Some of my friends have recently pushed me to share more insights from running Pricebaba all these years. So I would be sharing a few notes that I wrote to the Pricebaba team over the years. Please do note that this was written back in time and often impromptu emails sent out without much editing or at times much thought. I am open to feedback and comments on these 🙂
From: Annkur P Agarwal <annkur@pricebaba.com>
Date: Mon, Feb 2, 2015 at 7:17 PM
Subject: Commitment to Equality
To: all <all@pricebaba.com>, “community@pricebaba.com” <community@pricebaba.com>
Dear Friends,
Every since I started working in 2002, I have had invaluable learnings from the people whom I met and transacted with. However my learnings in recent years has been far greater than the entire previous decade of work that I saw. A large part of these learnings are as a result of starting PriceBaba. I have had to break many barriers within myself, learn new skills every day and grow myself as an individual & leader. In our Super Saturday sessions and other leadership meetings, I try and share a lot of these learnings with you.
Today I want to share another commitment that I have towards the PriceBaba team and the society as a whole. This commitment is towards equality. So much so that we are adopting Equality as a company value today. In some forms, it has been around in our values as growing each other, but let’s be more explicit about it.
During my US trip with 500 Startups, I was very hesitant and scared when dealing with service providers like property dealers & Americans in general. One thing I admire about the system there is the upfront legal commitment to equality. In the rental properties that we saw for our stay, there were clear notices that there would be no discrimination depending on ones race, gender or religion. And it was really so in practice too.
I would love to see more diversity at PriceBaba and we are fortunate enough to have the resources to make it happen. As you would already know we do not hire on the basis of what degree you hold or which institute you went to study. Similar we want to see more women at work too (and we have made progress at that!). I have noticed that it is not easy to break the convention and just be equal or allow diversity. We would need to actively change the conventional mindset and grow ourselves to achieve this.
There are important conversations about sexism and diversity that I would like to have with you in coming weeks. I am grateful that as PriceBaba I have had the opportunity to grow a lot of young leaders both within the company and outside. In many ways I am paying back to all the wonderful people who have invested time in growing me as an individual right since I started working during my teens.
I am committed to consciously up the game for ourselves and challenge the status-quo where necessary.
Regards
Annkur P Agarwal
Clerk-2-CEO, PriceBaba