After Hours with Saurabh Kochhar, CEO & Co-founder, Foodpanda
1. I love my job at Foodpanda. I’m surrounded by a fantastic team comprising excited, motivated and extremely creative people who are always pushing the envelope when it comes to product, strategy, business development or marketing. We are growing at a breakneck speed and I love such a high-energy work environment where everybody has only one aim—to maintain Foodpanda’s leadership position.
2. My days starts at 6 am when my daughter wakes me up. This way, I get to spend some time with her while she is getting ready. I reach office by 9 am and kick-start my day with a cup of steaming coffee. I spend most of my days in meetings or with my team, resolving issues, creating new possibilities, cracking partnership deals, brainstorming on ideas to disrupt the market further and maintain our leadership position. We have weekly core team catch-ups, that happen every Wednesday where we discuss some lighter work related issues and end up having great fun together. I feel it is of paramount importance for the team to stick together and bond well so that everyone is committed to the goal of quality performance.
3. I am mostly working on weekends, given that a major chunk of food orders come at this time. I start my weekend by sweating it out on the cricket ground with my friends in an early-morning session. I try to wind up my work as soon as possible and return home to spend the day with my daughter. I am quite a movie buff so I try to watch as many films as I can with my family/friends. From Govinda to Arnold Schwarzenegger starrers, I enjoy all genres.
4. I am a gadget freak and quite an Apple fan. From my MacBook Air to my iPhone 6 to my iPad Air 2, I swear by them all. I don’t leave home without my favourite limited edition Stuhrling wrist watch. My Bose noise-cancelling headphones (QC 20i) are more of an asset to me than a necessity. I have a fetish for collecting cellphones and have over 50 handsets, which I have collected since 2000.
5. I am not the most brand-conscious person, but there are a few brands that I always swear by — Apple for my gadgets, Tommy Hilfiger for my clothes, and, of course, Foodpanda for my food orders!
—As told to Banasree Purkayastha