Beyond fancy titles and corner offices, true leadership emerges from a different kind of transformation. It’s the phoenix effect in action – rising from the ashes of a negative experience, choosing to build something positive instead. This transformative journey begins the moment you decide to focus on the future, not the past.

Leaders like Akshay Dipali, Founder of Nasch, embody this spirit. They act as your workplace cultural guides, champions of positivity. But why is positivity so crucial?  According to Akshay, it’s not just blind optimism. It’s a conscious decision to find solutions, learn from setbacks, and inspire others to do the same. This positive mindset fuels teams forward, fostering innovation, resilience, and the willingness to take calculated risks – the hallmarks of true success.

The Inception of Positivity

Much like many others, Akshay’s entrepreneurial journey began with a negative experience. He encountered a toxic culture at a previous workplace, which sparked the beginning of his entrepreneurial path. Despite lacking a background in HR, Akshay was determined to make a difference. He conducted extensive interviews with HR professionals and CXOs from diverse industries, locations, and organizations. These interviews were crucial in understanding the real challenges faced by organizations and employees.

For Akshay, the insights gleaned from these interviews became the bedrock of Nasch. It became evident to him that there was a significant gap between the challenges organizations and individuals faced and the solutions provided by existing tools in the market. Nasch was founded to bridge this gap and provide meaningful solutions.

Providing Meaningful Solutions

Emerging from a negative experience isn’t easy. It requires strength, self-reflection, and the courage to choose positivity. But by doing so, you don’t just overcome that experience –  you transform yourself. You become a leader who inspires others to rise above negativity and build a better future together.

Akshay says, “Leadership isn’t about the absence of negativity. It’s about the transformative power of positivity. It’s about using your experiences, both positive and negative, to become a beacon of hope and a catalyst for change.”

Thus, leaders like Akshay, who exudes positivity, create a ripple effect. Their enthusiasm becomes contagious, motivating and empowering those around them. This positive environment fosters collaboration, open communication, and a sense of shared purpose. It becomes a breeding ground for creativity and out-of-the-box thinking, leading to breakthrough solutions.

The Power of Transformation

Though Akshay feels that they are far from a leader in this space right now, there surely is something transformational that they are doing. The Employee Engagement space has been unchanged for decades with no significant innovation. “And the philosophy that is driving our roadmap is the one of innovation and disruption. We want to do things differently that actually add value to building happier work environments,” insists Akshay.

The industrial landscape is continually evolving. He says that even though there have been no significant changes in this industry, the advent of AI has definitely pushed the envelope for innovation and raised expectations among HRs and CXOs. “With Nasch, we aim to disrupt the old ways of doing things.”

Finding the Missing Link

Since COVID-19, the workplace has been chaotic—many companies have moved to hybrid and permanent WFH schedules. It has become increasingly imperative to understand your employees on a personal level and keep them engaged even when they are distributed. A simple tap on the shoulder asking “How you are doing” is being missed now.

Nasch has those simple conversations at scale with employees while also resolving their challenges in real-time. “The resolution part is something that most tools miss, and we solve for that,” adds Akshay, whose visionary leadership style is often recognized as a driving force behind his company’s achievements.

Shedding light on his approach to leadership and team building within the organization, Akshay says, “My approach is not methodical, to be honest.” There are many personalities within an organization, and the best way is to have an open mind. “Our whole team is like that—we are aligned on our mission but very fluid in our ways of achieving that mission.”

“We sell great workplace culture solutions to our clients. And we understand that we have to walk the talk first ourselves. In that effort, there is autonomy, flexibility of work and fluidity of decision making as long as we are aligned towards the single goal.”

The Equilibrium of Customer Satisfaction

The essence of future transformation lies in innovation, disruptions, and enhancing the end-user experience. To strike a balance between operational efficiency and customer satisfaction, Akshay says he truly believes that customer satisfaction results from employee satisfaction. “We have systems in place for every function within the organization.” This processed approach keeps most of the customers’ experience great. “To go above and beyond, we all make equal efforts to keep customers happy,” he adds.

Digitalization and technological advancements are crucial aspects of the modern industrial ecosystem. Akshay, too, believes that it is paramount for them to integrate these principles into their core functioning and contribute to a technovative future. “Technology is at the heart of our organization. Not only do we use advanced AI to help our clients keep their employees happy, but we also use AI internally to automate many of our processes. For example, we help our clients read through thousands of employee feedback using AI in seconds.” The AI reads through all the responses and gives them a summary of it all in just a click of a button within ten seconds.

Fostering a Fluid Culture to Win Over Adversities

As one of the leaders in the world’s human resource niche, Akshay says they face their share of challenges every day. When asked to share an instance where his team’s resilience and ingenuity triumphed over adversity, he adds that triumphs happen by strategizing a solution to overcome it. “That is what we, as a team, do. We take a problem, strategize the causes, effects, and possible solutions, and then relentlessly execute.”

“One of the examples that I can think of is of a recent one.” One of the very well-known enterprises, it had a big annual board presentation coming up. In that board presentation, they got a last-minute request for custom data two hours before the board presentation. “Our team huddled and got that built in 57 minutes. This kind of speed only could have happened due to our culture of fluidity,” says Akshay.

A Meaningful Strategic Future Impact

Businesses are a way for the Indian industry to accelerate its economic potential and capacity. In his advice to other budding entrepreneurs who aspire to venture into the startup space, Akshay says: Don’t get caught up in analysis paralysis. You can never know everything all at once. Just get in the field and learn as you go.

Looking ahead, Akshay says they want to continue making a significant impact on the world’s transformational future workplace landscape. “My vision is global and not confined to India,” says Akshay. I genuinely believe that Nasch can add a lot of value to the workplace across the globe, thus building more productive and happier employees.”

Keeping that global vision in mind, this year, they are heavily focused on both the Indian and North American markets. “We are also adding two new use cases to our products, thus increasing the TAM that we operate in.”

As they grow, Akshay says they plan to stay true to their vision and mission, which they adopted when they started. “We aspire to make more meaningful strategic partnerships and 1000x our impact,” he concludes.