Learning And Relearning Is The Way Ahead

Mantosh Roy is a seasoned operations and Omni channel specialist with 21 years of retail and tech exposure across domains, cross-format, cross-functional fields, and geographies. Currently working at Nykaa as Vice President & Head, Retail Operations & Lead Omni channel, Mantosh is founder of two startups, ‘Not in Q’ and ‘Valkart’. In an interview with Corporate Citizen Mantosh shares his career journey and learnings…

Corporate Citizen: Tell us how you started your career journey.

Mantosh Roy : Like any typical student in the nineties, I wanted to be an engineer or a doctor but what I didn’t realise is that destiny has a larger part in what you become. You can choose to be either this or that but the man above has a different plan for you. There was a time in my life when I had a choice of four different careers and I did my assessments and I chose one. Twenty-one years later, I don’t regret the decision that had I made. While I was supposed to be a doctor in 1994, I am currently a general business professional.

CC: You have studied Design from National Institute of Fashion Technology India, you have also done Management from IIM-Bangalore, and now you are into the retail sector, how did the transition come across?

What happened was I passed out with a design degree in 1998. I worked for exactly six months and I knew that while I wanted to be in retail, I didn’t want to be a designer. I wanted to be a CEO. To get out of the design, which is a creative right-brain approach and became a CEO, which is a left-brain approach, I needed to keep training myself, and keep upgrading myself. So every few years I have completed either an advanced programme or a degree or a management course to keep adding value to my career. Every two years, I keep changing my role within the company. That is the only way one can navigate one’s careers in current times. You keep educating yourself, you keep changing your domains so that you are constantly learning and evolving. That’s how I landed from design to technology.

CC: Tell us about your role as VP and Head Operations at Nykaa.

Unlike most retailers such as Shoppers Stop, Big Bazaar, Pantaloons or a Central, Nykaa is unique as it started online and is building offline. Before joining Nykaa I was working for 18 years and I had my tech startup for two years. As a result, I knew that I wanted to be on the tech side of retail and I didn’t want to go for the old brick and mortar type of retail. When I met the team at Nykaa, we figured out a structure and I would work with Nykaa to grow the physical stores which are retail stores but also build Omni channel, which is how a business will grow in the next decade. Today at Nykaa, I lead retail operations i.e. retail expansion and simultaneously, I am helping build the Omni channel model for Nykaa.

CC: You have founded Valkart, how did that come about?

It started from the fact that having worked for 18 years, I was feeling that I knew everything in the brick and mortar side, I did not know enough in technology domain. The best way to learn something new is by doing it yourself, so I started my startup; it was like MBA everyday you meet with intelligent people, you interact with hundreds of people, you talk with investors, business partners and so on and that’s how I started Not in Q with co-founder Raju. Raju and I had met at IIM-Bangalore. Because we knew at the age of 38, we will be CXOs but we didn’t want to be a CXO we wanted to do be something more. We ran it for two years and pivoted to we came up with Valkart. So the inspiration was to learn and grow.

"There is nothing called strategy in business anymore. It is about doing things on a daily basis, learning and adapting. Conservative corporates don’t function that way”

CC: What were the challenges at that time when you were coming up with the new idea for your startup, the market scenario was different at that time, and how did you tackle those challenges?

I think there were two different challenges. The first challenge was at a personal level and the other was a professional level. At a personal level, when you are at 38, and you want to move from corporate to startup, you have to figure out that you don’t control everything. You have to leave many things to chance or destiny, you have to break your life into ninety-day buckets, and you cannot have a three-year plan. So the unlearning took a lot of courage and conviction. The second challenge was, you move away from a monthly salary to an unpredictable income or zero income. And how you do that when you are 38. That was on the personal front. On the professional front, there is nothing called strategy in business anymore. It is about doing things on a daily basis, learning and adapting. Conservative corporates don’t function that way. The biggest thing in a startup is MVP, Minimum Viable Product, you build something, you take it to the market if it succeeds you build on it, if it fails you pivot, and you do something else. You don’t keep doing again and again and expect different results and that is the big learning we had. Look at the long-term, but always focus on the immediate term, execute, measure and adapt.

CC: What were the challenges that you came across in your role and did you tackle them?

What I have learnt is that one has to be adaptable and flexible and you cannot become flexible and adaptable in one day. You have to build an attitude of flexibility and a character of adaptability. That comes with time which comes with keeping the ego aside. It comes with knowing that you can learn from everyone and knowing that every problem is not a problem but an option or an opportunity to move forward, that’s how you deal with problems with a base level. Tactically, you do assess the problem and one of thing that I have learned is you do de-clutter the actual mess to figure out what the actual problem is. People do it from a helicopter view, but you have to go down as an earthworm and figure out what the real problem is. That is normally a simple problem, which you can state in six words. Find out the problem and solve it.

CC: What are the key takeaways from your stint at Not in Q?

I have learnt two key lessons. Don’t think of the long-term and don’t worry about changing the world on day one. Do something, do it now, take it to your consumer, take feedbacks, and be ready to change. The other learning is to have a small win every day. A hundred small wins are bigger than one big win. Do something every day. Move forward. Don’t stop.

CC: Do you face any challenges while dealing with millennials?

Honestly, I do not. Because like I said, if you are adaptable and flexible and if you keep your ego aside then there is no question of facing any challenge. A millennial is nothing but another human, it is just that his or her perspective is different; their thought processes are different, what they expect is different and if you are able to align some base values, if you give them freedom, they too want to succeed in life, they too want to grow. I have a a six-year-old, and a nine-year-old. They are more difficult than millennials to deal with. How do you deal with a six-year-old child, who by the way also codes, the same way you deal with a millennial.

"One has to be adaptable and flexible and you cannot become adaptable and flexible in one day. You have to build an attitude of flexibility and a character of adaptability”

CC: How do you see India’s market in terms of beauty and wellness sector?

On the technical front, it is a big untapped market and there is a lot of potential in the market. That is why companies like Nykaa, Sephora, Myntra are doing what we are doing. But we need to look at it more from India as an economic standpoint, India itself is an untapped market. There are about 60 million online shoppers; penetration is less than 400 million online consumers. I think there is a long way to go.

CC: You have focused yourself into the retail sector is there any specific reason that you have aligned yourself to the retail sector?

I think the point here is… do you want to be a mile wide and an inch deep or do you want to be an inch wide and a mile deep. I choose to be an inch wide and a mile deep, which means that I want to be in retail and within that, I want to be in B2C. Within B2C I want to focus on Omni channel. So it is a career choice, it is about assessing ones strength and weakness after twenty years of working. I didn’t know that I want to stay in retail when had I started my career journey.

CC: There are various fashion bloggers, influencers in the USA for example, which give reviews and tutorials. Do you think India should also come par with the US industry?

The analogy of the US is not correct, the analogy of China, South Korea, and South East Asia is far better because they have a far more evolved set of vloggers, bloggers who actually influence a purchase. The USA and Europe are far behind when it comes to that. I think all innovations are going to come from emerging markets and bloggers/vloggers are that consumption-based influence. Yes, we are a part of the curve, we are still integrated with global economics so yes, we still have the trajectory of influences.

CC: What advice you would like to give to the students who are about to step in the corporate world?

Just realise that when the day you take up a job, you are ‘no one’. You should have a culture of a sponge and not of rock. When you start your career you have to be a sponge, you have to absorb everything and you have to pick up everything. You should not come with the approach that I know everything and this is how it should be. There will be highs and there will be lows every now and then. You should make yourself adaptable, flexible, and keep your ego aside. On day one, you are no one but try to become ‘someone’.

"Not anybody can apply for every job. You should know what job you want, apply for it and you should be so good that you get that job"

CC: Is there any need for retail shops in the digital world?

Just as needs evolve channels will evolve. It is not for me to say whether shops will remain or not remain, or if digital will grow or stagnate, each channel will have its use in its own domain for its own customer profile in its own region or geography. So I think the market will change. Being in the technology field, we stopped predicting stuff. It should not be right to predict, it should be important to adapt and read what is happening. If they will remain, they will find their own niche, if they don’t remain, their demise will be that they did not adapt.

CC: Is there any gap between what a college prepares its students for and what is expected when students join the corporate?

Normally there is a gap because that’s how our education system is built. Everybody applies for every job because education has built students that way, that’s not how it should be. Not anybody can apply for every job. You should know what job you want, apply for it and you should be so good that you get that job. You should know what you want and mixing your skills with what is required in the job. If you say, I can do everything then that is not going to hold true. That’s not the student’s lookout; it is the education systems’ lookout. Although, what the student can do is within that system figure out what works for him/her. If you walk into an interview, you should only walk into it if you know you are going to get that job. Don’t walk-in hoping to get a job or pretending that your life is on the line. Begging does not help. There is a disconnect but over time that will reduce.

CC: How do you maintain work-life balance?

If you don’t enjoy your work your aim is work-life balance. That happens when you have a job and not a role. If you look for a job because you want money and you have EMI to pay. Don’t have an EMI which means you can take a role you want, you don’t need a job. And if you take a role you want which you enjoy, you will never need work life balance. The simplest solution is don’t have a debt which is more than you can afford to pay. Let your friend buy an iPhone, or a 4BHK, he will have to work for 20 years to pay the loan. You can go to Sri Lanka with the money you have earned yesterday.

CC: What is the philosophy of life that you live by?

Take one day at a time. You cannot control everything. Be truthful. Enjoy what you do.

CC: What are your hobbies?

My hobbies are varied, I am an avid reader. I read around a hundred books a year across varied topics, which any good manager should do. I enjoy outdoor activities like squash, travelling and trekking. I also like working out.