An energetic team with a strong intent to do good work and learn is the key to success – Dhruvi Joshi, Co-founder, PivotRoots

When did the idea of founding PivotRoots strike your mind? Whose brainchild was that?

Once… Shibu Shivanandan, Hetal Khalsa and I were casually chatting with one of ou mentors & ex-boss, Gulrez Alam, about the future of digital and how we could make a difference by leveraging data & technology to drive marketing campaigns. That was the inception of PivotRoots! Hetal comes with a strong brand & creative expertise. She was the one who suggested the name and it just hit the right note with each one of us. That was exactly what we wanted.

How’s your experience working with Shibu Shivanandan and Hetal Khalsa as the co-founders of Pivot Roots? And how do you manage to cope up with ideological differences?

Working with Shibu and Hetal has worked out perfectly well. Coping with different ideologies haven’t been a challenge at all. It’s, in fact, helped us become smarter. Whenever we face a difficult situation or have trouble deciding, we end up bringing our different opinions and perspectives to the table, which actually helps us take a well-rounded approach. This is not limited to just decision making. In fact, our diverse perspectives have helped us discover alternatives which we wouldn’t have considered otherwise.  We believe that our ideological differences have driven us to innovate, expand our services/tools and accelerate our growth.

You joined Resultrix in 2010 and in 2017 you co-founded Pivot Roots. In just a span of 7-years, this transformation from being an employee to employer is tremendous. Tell us about the learning experience of your journey.

The last 7 years have been a roller coaster ride. From being a management graduate to working at HDFC Bank; from learning the digital business to running one, I’d have to thank my mentors who’ve always shown their trust in me and given me enough responsibility which has prepared me to handle such a position today. I have worked with some amazing people as colleagues, clients, and partners. Back in 2010, people were only talking about an era which would soon be digital first. I am glad that it happened so fast and I’m getting to live this, with so many opportunities to do some great work!

Having handled key agency accounts like ICICI Bank, Max Bupa, Royal Sundaram, HDFC Ergo, IMS, Microsoft Office, etc in the initial years of your career. What is your dream project? If you could elaborate a bit.

I have interned with MTV, worked on a project with Excel entertainment, strategized for few record-breaking movies with Disney, and I extensively work with Amazon Prime Video as well. With this experience in the entertainment vertical, I have one dream project!  I am a die-hard Shah Rukh Khan fan and would absolutely love to work on the digital campaigns for any of his movies/shows. I keep telling Shibu how I would work for any of Shah Rukh’s campaigns for free! ☺

See Also

In conversation with Ashok Shinde, Vice President-Media, PivotRoots

Finance sector seems to be your favorite. Isn’t it?

Hahaha!! Not really. During the early stages of my career at Resultrix, there was a time when I was managing multiple BFSI clients and I was even confident of starting up a bank or becoming an insurance provider :-P, but things have changed to a great extent now. PivotRoots has a healthy mix of brands across verticals - entertainment, travel, education, e-comm, tech, and others. I believe that working across industries has been quite an advantage. Things are done differently in different industries, a pace of adopting new technologies and channels in the digital medium is also different. Both personally and professionally it’s helped in multiplying learnings and in getting out of my comfort zone. So, no favorite sectors as such at the moment.

If we talk about Pivot Roots, on the other hand, it is already working with brands like Amazon Prime Videos, Disney, Pidilite, ICICI Bank, Swiggy. What’s the success formula?

An energetic team with a strong intent to do good work and learn is the key to success for any organization. In addition to that, the right company vision helps the company chalk out effective goals. For real growth, an organization should be able to mentor and give its team members, decision making freedom that helps them grow in their career professionally & personally. I believe these are the key areas which we have focussed on and have succeeded in. In the last 2.5 years, we have reached to a team of over 75 people in India & team of 5 in Dubai.

What are the future goals of PivotRoots and what do you, as a team, strategize to achieve it?

We have recently raised a round of funding to fuel our growth across India & Dubai. A part of the fund is also going to be used for building proprietary tech over the next few months.