Mohita Nagpal's answer to Which startups in India have the best workplace cultures?

Which startups in India have the best workplace cultures?

Writer · 10y ·

Originally Answered: Which startups in India have one of the best workplace cultures? ·

So I work at this place called Wingify in New Delhi and I am writing this while sitting on a recliner and sipping on to my latte. There are two bald dudes (by choice) on my right playing FIFA on a Play Station. A couple of employees just stepped in the office while head banging to an imaginary number in their gym wear and there’s a whole bunch of animated folks returning from the adjacent cafeteria-cum-Yoga room.

Beyond the limits of my 180 degree view, there’s obviously shit loads of work going on in cabins with glass doors, the yoga mats are being folded to stretch out the Table Tennis table and food being laid out for lunch (yes free lunches) in the cafeteria.

I could go on and list out about every possible cool thing in the office -- how we have completely flexible work timings, a refrigerator full of goodies and drinks, monthly hackathons, lots of beer and pizzas, free rein over the work we do, some amazingly talented folks to work with, a CEO who any day chooses to ditch his cabin over the bay area, a Bangkok trip to look forward to, a Sri Lanka trip (read: 2013) to reminisce about, random reasons to party -- but all these things in themselves don’t epitomize the awesome work culture at Wingify.

There’s much more to this company. And here’s a little personal story I want to share.

So in July this year I got sick. And then I got really-really sick and found myself in a hospital. Then the doctors screwed up a l̶i̶t̶t̶l̶e̶ (big time) and I found myself on the ventilator,̶ ̶s̶e̶c̶r̶e̶t̶l̶y̶ ̶m̶a̶k̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶a̶ ̶p̶r̶o̶m̶i̶s̶e̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶m̶y̶s̶e̶l̶f̶ t̶o̶ ̶b̶u̶i̶l̶d̶ ̶a̶ ̶m̶e̶l̶t̶e̶d̶ ̶c̶h̶e̶e̶s̶e̶ ̶p̶o̶o̶l̶ ̶w̶h̶e̶n̶ ̶I̶ ̶g̶e̶t̶ ̶w̶e̶l̶l̶.̶ Anyways, long story short. There was a hospital bill of close to 5 lakh to pay and my spending habits think I am an heir to the Hiltons of the world. And my saving habits….well, my saving habits don’t exist.

So yeah. The bill of 5 lakh was taken care of by the health insurance provided by Wingify. That was pretty awesome. Anyway, that’s not the whole story. I couldn’t turn up to work for a good two months – that’s a mighty 60 days. It wasn’t just the fact that I got my full salary for those two months (read: no leave policy), what was more heartening was that never in those two months did I ever feel I was being pressured to join sooner than what I was capable of. No gentle nudging. No questions asked. The cooperation and the trust the company showed was actually heartening.

Now a lot of you might think that’s not a big deal. But from where I come from (read: media), something like this is unheard of. I am sure if something like this would have happened at my previous jobs, I would have been politely asked to leave (twice over).

So, yeah. Coming back to the topic of awesome work culture, here's a little sneak peek into our lives here.

Christmas 2013! Check out our Santa's real look - Things have changed for Wingify's resident Marketer!