The Way I Work: Giri Balasubramaniam

As told to Shreyasi Singh

Photograph by S Radhakrishna

If Giri “Pickbrain” Balasubramaniam had his way, he would never sleep. Sleep, according to this CEO, is a complete waste of time. He would rather toss clues around, hunt questions and do some drilling down for answers. Because that’s what he does all the time he is awake. Balasubramaniam runs Grey Caps, a 7-year-old company that helped him turn his obsession for quizzing into a full-time profession. Together with his team, he has hosted over a thousand quiz shows across India, Singapore, Oman, Sri Lanka and the US, including Tata Crucible, India’s largest corporate quiz for five years now. He’s also presented what is considered the world’s biggest IT quiz, attracting over 1.3 million school students each year. In 2005-06, MIT nominated him for the Global Innovator Award. He is also the recipient of seven Limca Book of Records awards. As a man seeking answers to tough questions, he fell hard for the Mahatma. Such has been his fascination with the Gandhian philosophy that he has even earned a degree in it. When he is not travelling, this popular quiz master likes to oversee the research operations of his company and tickle the grey cells of his employees by holding quiz sessions at office.

When I am at home, I begin my day early, around 6am. However, on days when I wake up in other cities, flight schedules dictate my mornings. I always get up to an alarm clock. I don’t sleep for more than six hours; eight hours is too much. I like to tell young people that God has allocated a time for sleeping—and that’s in our graves. So, while you are living this life, don’t waste your time sleeping. I hate it. It’s totally over-rated for wellness.

The first thing I do every day is go and get some fresh air. There is a huge park near my house and I like walking through the greenery out there. I have been doing this for the last six months. I had to begin. The age bell had started ringing. Earlier, I was a gym guy. But, I didn’t enjoy the treadmill routine. I prefer the outdoors any day.

I walk for about 45 minutes and use that time to clear my e-mails. I am quite hooked to gadgets in the morning. My BlackBerry gets as active as me while I walk. Once my attention is on the BlackBerry, I don’t realise the distance I am walking. It takes me 10-15 minutes to respond to messages that need my attention. Then, I am mentally prepping for the day. My Outlook Express is open in the mind as I pound the pathways.

I am back home by about 7am to a mad rush. That’s the time when my daughter and son have to leave for school, so everything is wrapped around packing them off on time. If I am in town, I even drop them to school.

I have been on a strict diet regime over the past eight months. So, the breakfast menu is more measured. Being a vegetarian and a south Indian, I hardly go beyond the typical idli or dosa. However, the chutney has been replaced by sambar these days.

I am generally in office by 9:30am. What I do for the first two hours has usually been worked out during my morning walk. Typically, I start with critical updates, and conference calls, unless the client is a foreign client. The team is fresh and I am fresh. And, we can follow up if something goes wrong. Mornings are a great time to get some solid work done. Although I am technically the CEO, I head research in the company. For knowledge-based businesses like ours, the research and content forms the core. A senior colleague handles the marketing and business development function. I work on clients only after their acquisition. Marketing takes away too much bandwidth. Because of my travel, I am usually not available for meetings.

My clients dictate my calendar. Last year, I travelled for 183 days. That’s more than half the year—but, unfortunately, crunched into nine months, and not 12. I am completely jobless during April, May and June. Schools and colleges shut down for summer holidays; and the number of corporate shows also dwindles. But besides that, my schedule can be pretty hectic. Take my current itinerary, for instance. Today is Friday and I am in Delhi. I was in Indore on Wednesday, Ahmedabad on Thursday, Mumbai on Saturday, Pune on Sunday and Goa on Monday. I get home to Bengaluru on Tuesday and leave on Wednesday again. It can get quite crazy and breathless at times.

My busiest days are usually between Friday and Sunday since most quiz shows are slotted for those days. For me, Monday and Tuesday are as close as it gets to a weekend. I’ll usually be in Bengaluru on those days because there is still office to go to on Monday morning. My last weekend was the first Sunday of August. I remember that day because I went out to have dinner with my wife. She had taken a look at my calendar and pointed out that that was going to be my last holiday this year. I realised we needed to do something fun.

Travel, honestly, is my most productive time. There are few people to interrupt me—and even fewer phone calls to deal with. The time belonged exclusively to me, until my office figured that out and decided to dump work on me.

I also like travelling because I can read a lot. As a rule, I don’t spend time on books at home. That’s time devoted to the family. I rarely read fiction. Of late, I have been reading more business books to glean entrepreneurial insights. But, that isn’t limited to books on Google and IBM. It’s about people’s lives. I recently finished a book on Lance Armstrong. He’s inspirational. I am now reading SimpliFly by Captain Gopinath.

What I dislike about my travel is delayed flights. My secretary dislikes them even more because I get very impatient. I want to be put on to whichever flight is leaving earliest. I try and curb that habit now since cancelling flights costs a lot of money. I am a lot milder in my tantrums.

Since I am on the road for a long time, I depend heavily on technology to stay connected. We are an all-laptop organisation. My research team consists of 16 people; they are my core group. We also use the services of several freelance consultants, who are mostly domain experts. For instance, our consultant for this quiz, themed on architecture, sits in Switzerland. But, distance hardly matters in today’s world. Technology is a boon for companies like ours. Most of our meetings are on Skype or Yahoo chat, and they usually end with somebody asking, “So, Giri, where are you?” People don’t know where I have logged in from.

Preparations for holding any quiz session starts at least a month in advance. We have to understand what the entire programme is about, who the audience is, and what objective are we trying to achieve. And of course, we have to be ready with our research. Every quiz is about a clutch of questions and their answers. But, at the end of the day, the programme has to meet a client objective, or a theme. We need to grasp that even before we reach the drawing board.

I try and reach an event venue at least an hour and a half in advance. My getting there early puts pressure on the logistics team—the carpenters and electricians. I never get on stage before testing the sound and light arrangements. It’s my show that becomes shoddy if I don’t prepare properly.

I try and squeeze out time to hold such quizzing sessions at our office too. Often, we test our questions by running them past our employees. It helps us keep our own grey cells revitalised. And, it’s a great way to bond. By the way, I lose both ways—I pay for lunch, even if I win.

Sometimes, I feel blessed that I have been able to carve a profession out of my passion. I am a quizzer who’s become a quizmaster. I love the whole process. Boredom is out of the question here. I love the fact that we are continuously filling someone with some information or knowledge that he didn’t have. That makes me real satisfied. I also get very excited when somebody cracks a question, which I thought was beyond his reach—especially if it is a child.

I have to admit, however, that I don’t enjoy everything about running a business. I hate finance. And I have accounts even more. It’s a compulsion. I respect law and statutory requirements. They are sacrosanct for our company since we believe in being a transparent organisation. Nobody values the cost of regulatory compliances on companies in India. We need much easier solutions.

We don’t have the typical employee engagement issues. I’d like to believe that my guys see me as a mentor. We don’t have a hierarchy. Everything is about roles and responsibilities. I am more the friendly guy in office, the good cop. Actually, I’d probably be the good Samaritan. It’s the COO who has to play the bad cop.

As a company, we have realised that dissonance within the system stems from poor clarity on roles and responsibilities, and the monetary compensation from them. If the deal has been defined in writing and agreed upon by both parties, the dissonance is at a manageable level. We know it’s working for us because most of our employees have been with us for around three-and-half years. That’s not bad for a seven-year-old company.

Getting the right set of talent is a phenomenal challenge, especially because we are at the knowledge end of the knowledge business. My main audience is the IIT/IIM crowd. We constantly deal with high expectations, which is why our content and research needs to be done by a similar group. I make my team from these institutes. It’s a tall task. First, because the space we are in does not even qualify as an industry. We seek individuals who are young and more importantly, convinced that this can be a career path for them. Second, choosing us often means a choice not to take a McKinsey or a Goldman Sachs. Now, that’s tough.

I consider myself lucky to have worked and interacted with some of my living inspirations. Abdul Kalam is one such person. He inspires me hugely. He is also keen on promoting quizzing in India. I have also had the privilege of working with people such as Narayana Murthy. Infosys is one of our biggest clients.

Another man whose thoughts have had a huge impact on my life is Edward de Bono. His concept of lateral thinking is the base of most of our quizzes. I wish we could use even a fraction of what he has documented. I managed to get him once for the finals of a Tata Crucible quiz.

Fundamentally, I am a big fan of Mahatma Gandhi. I think he is India’s biggest brand. I have even studied the Gandhian philosophy from Madurai Kamaraj University. While I was doing the course, I was a laughing stock at my office and home. To add to it, I was on the advisory panel of the college, which was my examination centre. But, I am definitely doing a doctorate on Gandhi. I admire his clarity on things. His life has taught me how to live simply and put aside one’s ego. I follow that consciously.

I start winding down while I drive back home. I am quite a ghazal enthusiast. This is the time when I like to get a good dose of such music. I let the music wash all over me and calm my senses. I don’t mind listening to classical instruments either. It’s a great way to de-stress. I am not much of a TV guy except for news, and even that I read or watch more and more on the web.

I am generally home by 7:30pm on a good day, 9pm on a bad day. My wife, though, seems to think it’s always the latter. As a family too, we are not TV junkies, or into movies. With both of these time-sucking things out of the way, we get a lot of time to ourselves.

I always take a three-month off. Whatever I do or not do, I would definitely do the holiday. It’s time reserved for the family. Any holiday is a good holiday, whether you spend it at a beach, or on a mountain. Over a period of time, you run out of options in any case. It’s really embarrassing when you go back to a hotel. But, with young children—my younger one is two years old—you really don’t have much choice left.

I like to have a light dinner before retiring for the day. Breakfast is my heaviest meal. Lunch is always a grab-and-go thing wherever I am. I am basically a dal-roti guy. I do go out to restaurants and pubs, but to meet up with friends in the cities I travel to. That over, I usually turn in by midnight or so.

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