When my journey with Bizom started in 2019, I knew there would be a steep learning curve for the first few months. Throughout my career, I have worked in different industry sectors but in the marketing and communications space. Each industry had unique requirements and challenges that helped me to learn and develop a variety of marketing and communication skills. But the first few months were always challenging.
That was the case with Bizom too. I had known that the Bizom Annual Conclave would be held in my first week at Bizom. What I hadn’t known was that I had to organize a day-long shoot for 20 customer testimonials within two days! Also, Akshay D’Souza cheerfully told me that I’ll have to give the opening introduction to our keynote speaker. What?! It was only my 4th day at the organization. But everybody in the team helped me and we were able to pull it off!
Still, the hectic activity of the first week marked what would be the next two years at Bizom. The first 10 months went in a daze of building a content and PR practice for the marketing team. I enjoyed the experience because I was learning new things.
Creating and marketing content was easy. Building a PR practice from scratch was hard. I had always worked with PR agencies to manage public relations for an organisation. But Bizom didn’t have great experiences of working with PR agencies so Akshay and Lalit asked me to develop press relationships even if it would take a while to do so. I had limited success until I was able to crack into Economic Times Prime when COVID-19 first struck in 2020.
COVID-19 was a game changer to how we functioned as a marketing team. Unfortunately, Akshay D’Souza fell sick and was bedridden for a long time. Suddenly, we were working with Lalit Bhise who made it his mission to change the marketing team. It was a hard change but those difficult times demanded all hands on board and some tough decisions.
But the phase finally helped me to execute a content calendar that I had created on day 01 of joining Bizom. That alone felt like an accomplishment and one that we have been able to maintain in the marketing team.
Since then, I went through several other changing phases including the most recent one of managing the marketing team. I can’t say that I gracefully accepted this responsibility which came just about when I was in the early stages of my pregnancy. It was an extremely stressful period but accepting the job at hand and having a great team really helped me.
As I head off on my maternity leave, I know I leave the functioning of the marketing department in capable hands. Of course, Lalit being Lalit will ensure everything turns on its head and somehow does what it needs to do. I look forward to greater achievements in the days to come. Cheers!
Srinidhi Shastry, Head of SME at Bizom, has successfully leveraged his curiosity and perseverance to achieve great milestones.
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