Deepa Kartha
FOunder & CEo, ZINDA
ABOUT zinda
Our breakthrough employee engagement solution aligns and energizes associates to achieve strategic objectives.
We help unlock tremendous potential across your organization by maximizing discretionary efforts across your workforce to drive key outcomes.
Deepa Kartha, Founder & CEO of Zinda, interviewed with Holistic to discuss the products Zinda offers and the impact they have on companies and their employees.
the interview
What motivated you to develop Zinda? Did your background play a role in this decision?
I worked in Fintech for 20 plus years in a global leadership role in Capital One, HSBC, and Household. Through these experiences, I saw that companies were constantly going through changes, which resulted in most people being in a daily fire-fighting mode and not truly engaged with the company. As a result, a majority of the employees were disengaged in the company’s strategic direction. This resulted in the company’s leaving so much on the table, as they were not really tapping into the potential of their employees for forge forward. I did not find any tech solution that solved this problem in the marketplace. Zinda is all about solving the problem to help people stay engaged and feel fulfilled in their job.
On tech: how does Zinda use technology to help ease friction between employees and companies to make employees feel engaged? How do companies create platforms of engagement for employees?
Journyz is our flagship product. It is a web and mobile employee engagement platform. Through Journyz, companies can design daily digital experiences to engage their employees. These experiences could be through polls, recognition, communication, feedback, collaboration and more. Journyz uses customized templates for each company to have access to these features.We have created templates that companies can use to set-up in minutes and can help design these digital experiences for companies.
How is Zinda’s impact measured? Does Journyz collect data to measure its effectiveness?
The impact and effectiveness are measured through Journyz itself through analytics and scores. When an initiative happens, the goals can be measured through the software. We also conduct surveys to measure and track the difference and improvement in productivity as well as workplace culture.
Improving employee performance and the workplace environment is a challenge where teamwork is key. Are you in collaboration with any other innovative organizations to tackle the issues together?
We work with companies who are in the problem solving space in HR and organizational behavior. Our collaboration with Holistic is one such partnership. We value the opportunity to join forces with creative associations to provide solutions for companies to attract and retain their employees and engage them towards major initiatives that transform the company.
In contrast to your allies, does Zinda have competitors or organizations in opposition of your mission?
As our features include digital experiences that include communication, collaboration, feedback, recognition and more, there is no one main one competitor. I believe everyone is trying to,solve the complex problem of engagement from their angle. We look at the problem and see this as a problem that needs to be solved on a daily basis, using a combination of technology, leadership and grass roots involvement.
As part of the tech industry, if you had to pick one app to be able to share with everyone you meet, which would it be?
Journyz, without a doubt! Journyz works no matter your team size because it can personalize to the individual and can scale across geographies and divisions. It can get your teams closer together and working as a single cohesive unit.
Chicago is home to so many tech startups, not to mention to the industry itself. When did you decide to call Chicago home?
I settled in Chicago around twenty years ago. I moved to Chicago from California to do do my MBA at Kellogg and decided to stay here as I fell in love with the area and felt that I belong here. Currently, I reside in South Barrington.
From your time in Chicago, what about the city do you enjoy?
The warmth. I don't mean winters and summers. I mean the warmth that makes me feel at home because of the intensity, the comfort, the potential, and the approachability.
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