In 2010, friends Anjan Pathak and Partha Neog came up with the idea of engaging employee programs while discussing startup ideas. Partha has a decade long experience in different tech companies and has observed the impact other brands have due to the spending nature of corporates.
in 2011, this duo then decided to start Vantage Circle with the initial capital of Rs. 30 lakh. It took off as a discount program and deals for employees. Vantage Circle, today, is a cloud-based comprehensive employee benefit and engagement platform which provides benefit package to corporate employees through corporate offers, engagement programs, and rewards.
This Guwahati based startup declares to be the largest Indian employee recognition and rewards solution provider in the country. Some of the names of its big clientele include Infosys, Cognizant, PayPal, Wipro, HCL, GE etc.
Anjan says “With over one million users and serving some of the top global MNCs of the world, Vantage Circle is a one-stop global employee engagement program for corporates looking to engage their employees.”
Anjan has almost spent his 17 years of IT career as a freelance consultant in the UK. He has been architecting and building an enterprise web application for more than a decade and has spent most of the time working for global giants like Tesco, Philips, Thomas Cook, and Royal Mail. From the time he has returned to India, he has been involved with Vantage Circle in building and monitoring the product, operations, and marketing team.
Anjan says that one of the initial struggles for the company was in scaling. Being in a Tier II city, attracting investors’ attention was also difficult. Thus, until about 2014 Anjan and Partha focused mainly on sales and marketing.
The company was started just with two people and now the company has about 65 people in its team and has plans to grow to 100. “However, as 95% of our employees are from Guwahati, we face significant challenges in getting skilled manpower. Urgent hiring is always a big problem for us. Recruiting, training, and keeping our colleagues motivated is probably one of the biggest challenges I faced. This was another reason for the slow rate in scaling. Today, the average experience in our team for three years. The attrition rate is also low.” adds Anjan. He believes the greatest strength and advantage to his company are the employees.
The employee revenue generated is reaching more than $500,000 dollar and the company is now profitable. Even in terms of clients, Anjan says that “it is growing massively with almost all major corporates outsource their employee engagement part to them. Currently, we have a tour of the top 10 Indian IT firms as our clients and have offices in Delhi Bangalore and are expanding rapidly in Guwahati. we have partnered major E-Commerce portals like Amazon Flipkart Myntra etc to provide customized deals and discounts to corporate employees in India.”
Vantage Circle was awarded a large contract for the employee rewards and recognition platform by one of the largest enterprises in the US last year. Vantage Circle’s platform provides over 90,000 employees of the clients based in the US and India and easy way to devote their points through this.
This contract marks the entry of Vantage Circle in North America and they have opened in New York recently.
In the current business environment, where competition persists it is important for a company to keep its employees engaged. An employer must always keep the employee satisfied and motivate them and boost their morale for better productivity and achievement of the goals. Vantage Circle helps in the same to the companies and corporates.
Anjan says, “We are changing the way HR manages Employee Engagement and Benefits programs. Creating one single platform to engage employees through Rewards and Recognition, Wellness, Perks, Sentiment Analysis, and more – both through web and mobile – a business model makes it very cost-effective (in some cases zero costs) for the corporate to use our platform.”
This platform provides some benefits like rewards and recognition, wellness programs, and shopping discounts to employees that have previously been the hassle filled tasks to the HR department in corporates. It’s a difficult and time-consuming task dealing with multiple vendors.
The bridge between vendors and corporates is Vantage Circle bringing them together on a single platform. It helps the corporates in providing a cost-effective and comprehensive employee benefits package to their employees.
Anjan adds, “Our platform is specially designed for attracting and retaining key employees, through a range of privilege programs such as corporate offers, rewards and recognition, health and wellness, and others.”
Vantage Circle considers the combination of its products suite covers the entire range of employee engagement as well as its low pricing as its UPS over all its competitors such as Xoxoday in India and OC Tanner, Workhuman, Achievers, etc in the world.
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has caused an Unexpected shift in the work habits, with millions forced to work from a distance from the day crisis began. Companies are now depending on tools like video conferencing, more permanent collaborations, and team management.
Under the pandemic, moving employee engagement measures is also tough. Thus, it is important to keep the businesses cultivate motivated as well as a satisfied workforce. Vantage Circle is being the latest cloud-based technology helping in the same.
Vantage Circle incorporates on spot recognition reward points unique awards to boost morale and peer to peer appreciation. It also helps companies in learning about employee experiences and satisfaction through user-friendly feedback features. This platform is designed for leaders to recognize and reward teams distinctly offering them a huge range of incentives which will inspire them to work hard. Also, discounts on top brand products available so that businesses can appeal to a variety of shopping on leisure interests.
Vantage Circle achieves services through features such as:
Vantage Fit: To rejuvenate the overall wellness of the employees there is an advanced and customizable health Wellness mobile app.
Vantage Rewards: This is a points-based rewarding, peer to peer appreciation and social recognition platform.
Vantage Perks: This is an employee discount platform offering a wide range of deals and discounts from leading brands, and,
Vantage Pulse: This is a powerful employee survey tool which helps in measuring employee engagement, boost their performance and improve company morale in the workplace.
Future of Vantage.
After entering the US, Vantage Circle is now planning to expand aggressively to other countries as well. Moving ahead, Vantage Circle wishes to catch hold of a bigger market amongst mid-segment companies in India as well as abroad. “On the technology front, our future is to make the platform easy-to-use and scale globally. We also want to achieve operational efficiency by automating a lot of tasks we do.” Anjan says.
