According to Ram Deshpande, chief marketing officer, Lendingkart, more often than we should, we attach way too much importance to what we’re doing.
He explained, “In one of my past jobs, I used to be stressed out big-time and I was like, ‘Why am I doing this?’ Then, a college friend of mine came to visit. He was an ex-Navy commando. He said, ‘What is it that you’re going through?’ I spoke about the amount of work on my plate and he said, ‘Look! I was doing rescue work during the tsunami.’” That helped Deshpande adopt a different take on life. The CMO of Lendingkart provided a host of such insights during an exclusive interaction. Edited excerpts:
The creator economy has taken the world by storm. Which influencers and trends are you following currently?
Creator economy—the term itself is new. I follow mostly sports, news and entertainment categories. In the domain of news, I like listening to Palki Sharma Upadhyay (Firstpost journalist).
When I was in college, Cyrus Broacha was such a big star. The kind of work he’s doing on his podcast Cyrus Says is very interesting. Then obviously the big idea of it all was ‘The Joe Rogan experience’.
‘The Ranveer Show’ is another good example of how the economy is best utilised or what a creator can really achieve. Whatever YouTube and Instagram throw at me, I kind of get sucked into it. And it depends on the topic. Harsha Bhogle (cricket commentator and journalist) is a great example of a person who has achieved so much. I follow him on X.
What marketing-related content do you consume in your free time?
I try to stay away from marketing in my free time because it happens every day. I think Tanmay Bhat (Indian YouTuber and comedian) is a great example of someone who has transitioned into the marketing world so well and is doing so good.I think the kind of content he’s putting out and everything has a purpose behind his content.
Obviously, the gurus of marketing are all out there. There is so much content again out there and Instagram has made us make a lot of things very accessible. Because in short-form content, we are getting a lot of interesting information.
But what I do during my free time is, I just go and talk to customers.
Like most businesses, whether it was Samsung, where I spent years, and Snapdeal before that, we were also the consumers of our content. But in Lendingkart, we’re not. So, I need to spend a lot more time understanding my customer base. Wherever I am, I try to meet as many potential customers or that category of small businesses.
The beauty of our country is that there are small businesses everywhere. You may not find big factories in all places, but you’ll always find small businesses, whether it’s a retail shop or a bakery. I think I get to see how people consume content, which is very important for us.
There is a lot of talk about burnout, workplace toxicity and hustle culture. What steps have you taken to avoid the adverse impact of the always-on culture on yourself and your colleagues, and what advice would you give to your peers, colleagues and next-gen marketers?
A very important topic. It is something that we discuss a lot in our group at Lendingkart. What we have done inside our group is that we make sure that everybody takes time off at the right time of the year. That kind of culture has sort of brought in some stability in terms of people not getting burnt out on a short-term basis.
There are multiple kinds of burnouts. One of my ex-colleagues is an MIT graduate who is based in the US. I tried to understand the topic of burnout and the more I speak with people, the better I also understand myself.
As an organisation, we try to make sure that there is enough time available for people to do their own thing. Second is to be there to help whatever the situation demands.
A lot of times, we attach way too much importance to what we’re doing. That doesn’t have to always be the case. We’re not we’re not soldiers on the battlefield, we are not frontline healthcare workers. During the period of COVID-19, this realisation came very strongly.
In one of my past jobs, I used to be stressed out big-time and I was like, “Why am I doing this?” Then, a college friend of mine came to visit. He was an ex-Navy commando and he put a lot of perspective on me. He talked to me and said, “What is it that you’re going through?” I spoke about the amount of work on my plate and he said, “Look! I was doing rescue work during the tsunami.” That’s a totally different level of stress.
The third part is on the hustle culture. There are both positive and negative connotations to it. When things get glorified as hustle, that’s a problem. When there is real hustle which is very clearly planned or where there is a clear end goal in mind, then it makes sense. If hustle is a lifestyle, then that’s a problem. We try to discourage people from doing that. When we discuss the smallest of ideas, we sort of make sure that people write down exactly what they want to achieve with that and have a certain kind of a timeline and at what point they would need help. We’ve seen that these three to four things help in handling burnouts as well as issues where people sort of get stressed out big time.
Is there any sport or fitness routine you practice?
No (laughs). I used to be a fairly serious cricketer and squash player, but my knees gave way. Luckily in Bengaluru, there is a lot of greenery in the place where I live. I try to do brisk walking. I follow a 30-minute yoga protocol. I focus a lot more on healthy living, healthy eating, and try to avoid all aerated drinks.
We have to be very careful. The thing is that, it also matters what kind of company you have.
What does your weekend look like?
Shopping. I tease my wife and my daughter saying that their natural habitat is the mall. My daughter is 9 years old. So, there’s a lot of energy that she has. We try to make things out of a simple trip to the mall, we might explore a play, we might explore science museums.
Another good thing on the weekend for me is quizzing. I like doing trivia quizzes. Some of my old collegemates and I had a lot of fun getting together and do quizzing. Basically, one person becomes a quiz master and everybody else answers.
That helps us remain connected to people who are in different parts of the world. We connect every weekend to do quizzing. Recently, I had my college reunion and it made me feel a bit old. But it was good to meet and learn from them (former collegemates).
What are you reading? Any recommendations?
Right now, I am reading books by Dave Barry (British TV and radio presenter). I will recommend Dave Barry to anyone who wants good old humour. I just finished reading Arun Shourie’s ‘The Commissioner for Lost Causes’.
Any work or life hack you swear by?
Don’t check emails (laughs). I check emails every now and then but one day—prior to joining Lendingkart—I didn’t check my email for one day and nothing happened. Then I told myself, “Let me go another day and let’s see what happens.” And nothing happened once again. I did not check emails for a week and nothing happened.
Then, it just continued. So I just stopped checking emails. Most of the time, the emails are just either updates or some request for approval. So the productivity hack for me is not checking emails regularly.
A piece of wisdom you would like to share?
One thing that has helped me a lot is to just be curious. These days, it’s a lot easier to satisfy your curiosity because everything is available on the internet and on your phone. You’re never far from that information but it’s just a question of whether you are curious about it or not.