A family wedded to work
Working with one’s sibling? Not everyone can stomach the familiarity of family in a workspace. But siblings
As corporate and ad film makers, the duo spent long hours shooting and editing their films. “It wasn’t that we weren’t enjoying our lives. We were cool, living it up and having a blast. But we wanted to get married and have a family,” she says, adding, “After all, all around us, people were getting married to their childhood sweethearts or going in for arranged marriages. None of these seemed to work for us,” she says. On an impulse, they decided to start a Facebook group in 2009. And within the next month, they had 250 members.
Although the two are “tied by blood” and have each other’s backs, they found themselves disagreeing right from the word go. Varsha points out that when they started off, the venture was known as Footloose and Fancy. “Then, we disagreed about the kind of website we wanted,” she says. While she was for it being a casual meeting group, her younger brother insisted that it had to be a matrimonial group.
“We argued about it for several hours,” Abhishek says. “My point was that it was a group that people would come to after they were done with dating. It wasn’t a fun, hobby group where people would come in without an agenda.” After much debate, Varsha gave in.
They lost 300 members, then gained 650. “Finally Abhishek was right. I’m glad I gave in,” Varsha says.
At the end of the day, they value and respect each other’s ideas and suggestions. Even as many friends and acquaintances termed them “desperate”, they chose to stick to their passion. “People thought we were so desperate to get married that we were setting up a company to find our spouses,” Varsha says. Abhishek adds, “We may fight like cats and dogs — but it’s only for the betterment of the company that we have so passionately set-up.”
Today, the siblings and working partners are each other’s biggest support. In fact, at Abhishek’s birthday in December, Varsha suddenly realised that family outnumbered friends. “We’re now such a large family ourselves that we don’t feel the need for friends,” she says.
Working with family comes with its own baggage. In this duo’s case, it has led them to be completely honest to the business, with no room for a hidden agenda or office play. “When we started off, no one believed in the concept,” Abhishek says. The only reason Varsha believes the set-up worked is because it is run by siblings. “Otherwise, we might have come across as sleazy.”
After the fourth event that they conducted —when Abhishek met his now-spouse — people around them start believing in the idea.
“Until then, most people thought it was a social experiment,” he says. They go on to add that there are no “grey areas” and transactions are completely transparent. “Decisions are peppered with personal opinions and experiences, but since we know each other through and through, at the end of the day, work does not feel like work,” he says.
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