 So we're here at the ID Tech X show. Hi. Hi. So who are you? I'm Shantanu Dhar. I'm the Group Human Resources Head of a company called the ASTAR Group and our flagship company Classic Stripes is right here today. So here you're exhibiting what are you showing here? We are showing you our printed electronics products and we are the pioneers from India in this particular area of printed hybrid flexible electronics. So we're going to do a video of the booth later? Yes, of course. You're also talking about something else? You have a project going on? Yes, yes, yes. So we are. I am looking for some very high-end technical, smart people in the field of printed electronics from here, the Silicon Valley, the rest of America, Europe and Asia and I'll tell you what we have to offer you. A very, very unique culture which probably you won't get to see in many, many organizations, most of the organizations in this world. Number one, we're an organization that believes in action so we have no activities. All activities are out, so we have done away with performance appraisals. We don't have performance appraisals in this company. It's an activity. Guess what? We also don't have something which none of you guys like. We don't have meetings. It's a company that doesn't have meetings. What we have are small little workshops which we do maybe standing up where decisions are taken and action points are actually made. Our culture has been defined into just three simple words. The first one is entrepreneurship which we have defined as my circle of accountability. So everybody is accountable and accountability is different from responsibility. There's pride in accountability while responsibility brings burden. So I'm the HR guy. Something goes wrong or something goes right. Guess what? The buck stops with me. I don't give you a reason for that. The next one is execution. Execution is my word. So basically what it means is if I give you my word it's going to happen. So if you write an email to me or any of our employees and we say we're going to reply in 12 hours, guess what? In 12 hours there will be a response and a particular action. So there is an enormous amount of trust in the organization because everybody gives their word and both of these things are tied up to another word called collaboration. Now what is collaboration? Collaboration is very different from cooperation. Human beings cooperate. We've learned to cooperate from the time of the agricultural revolution but cooperation is always something to do with a carrot and a stick. People cooperate with each other to get something out of it. Right? While collaboration is different. In collaboration we don't expect anything from the other person but we take a stand for the other person. So collaboration we have defined as I care for my colleague's success as much as I care for my success. What has this created? This has created an organization where everybody is in in action. Everybody comes on time. Everybody leaves on time. Work gets done. It's built upon a platform of what we call authenticity which is different from honesty because an honest person can also be rude. We're not rude. We're respectful towards each other but we always speak in an authentic manner. It's a fast paced, good, fun atmosphere which has we have built an atmosphere of zero politics because we believe politics is a wasteful time. So if you want to experience this kind of a culture send me your resume at shantanu.dhordhar at astart.com. S-H-A-N-T-A-N-U dot d-h-a-r at a-s-t-a-r-c dot com. We'll put this on under the video. So this sounds like a very different kind of organization right there. S-Yes, of course. S-I haven't heard this stuff before. S-Right. S-Is it unique? S-Absolutely unique. S-Absolutely unique. S-Absolutely unique. S-Is it like a new invention? S-It's not a new. I would say that it is years of research which I have done into a human behavior at the workplace. I'm a human resources professional with a degree from an American university. I used to actually live and work in the U.S. and I worked in Europe too and extensively in India. S-So there's so many points in there. There's so many special things. S-Right. S-People hate meetings. That's one thing, right? S-Right. S-What's bad about the meetings? Is it just a waste of time or what's the problem? S-Well, what happens in meetings? Most meetings are actually called to dispense information. So in this day and age you have email, you have WhatsApp, you have chats, any kind of information can be dispensed through that. You don't need to pull everyone into a room to dispense information. S-If you need to dispense information, you can do a little presentation or something like that or a little document and just share it. S-Well, that's another thing. In our company, we don't necessarily do presentations. We think that's a waste of time. S-A pitch or something. If you want to convince somebody, right? S-Well, then again, in our company, we believe in convincing anyone. We believe in alignment because convincing means agreement. If I get you to agree with me, essentially I'm saying I'm right, you're wrong. So agree with me. So we build alignment. We don't build agreements. S-But isn't the way most companies work is that there's a boss and the boss decides everything? S-Well, in our company, what we have done is we have built this particular culture so that people don't need people, leaders do not waste their time supervising other people because supervision is an activity, it's not an action. So we have created a culture where everybody is well trained and empowered to carry on their responsibilities and everyone, based upon these three objectives of entrepreneurship, execution and collaboration, take one or two objectives which is over and above their day-to-day activities and it's all binary. Either you've done it or you haven't and each of these objectives has the same rating. They all measure up to a 0.1. So at the end of the year, if somebody has achieved 50% of their objectives, they get 50% of their performance incentive. If they've achieved 10%, they get 10% of their performance incentive, right? It's as simple as that. It is so simple that you don't need to supervise anybody because you know exactly what your team is doing and you spend your time as a leader adding personal value to the organization and to yourself. S-Personal incentive. Is that what you mean by personal? Is that anything to do with performance evaluations, right? Yeah, so what I'm talking about is at the end of the year there's something called an incentive which is over and above, Saleel, which is over and above your compensation, your fixed compensation. Why is that? The reason why we call it compensation is because compensation means that I'm compensating you for the time which is spending in my organization. That's not easily measurable. But there's something called a variable incentive at the end of the year which is based upon what you have done to achieve the company strategy. And the company strategy is, are the objectives that we take in our entrepreneurship, executive and collaboration objectives. It is a little bit kind of like a performance evaluation, no? We don't believe in the word performance because when you talk about performance, you're talking, you know, performance essentially comes from the, from the, from the, from the circus. So you have performance animals. They're human beings. We don't expect them to perform. If I hire you, I know that you will perform. So I'm not going to waste my time in measuring how well you perform. I'm only concerned about the objectives that you have taken, whether you've achieved them or not. And if you have not achieved them, then what can I do to help you achieve them? So what's the, what's the company doing? What's, what's the, is that, right now you're describing the, kind of like the organization, right? Yes. But what about the goal? The company's needs to have some targets and some goals and stuff, right? Oh yeah, we do have. Yes, of course. So that's what, when I talked about the entrepreneurship, executive, execution and collaboration, each one takes one or two objectives on each which are linked to the company strategy. And our strategy is to become the world's finest printed electronics player. Printed electronics is going to change, it is changing the world, but it's going to be all of the place. It's going to be in the, in the table, on the floor, it's going to be all over the place. Yeah, it's going to be all over me. I mean, it's going to be wearable devices. Printed electronics is going to affect everything. Yes. So you want to be world leading in the printed electronics. Absolutely. In fact, one of our vision statements is to touch everyone's lives. That's, that's pretty cool kind of, because it's important when people go to work, they want to be, happiness is, if you work hard, they want to do something meaningful, potentially huge. It's important to have big dreams, right? Yes, of course. So, are you talking about hiring? Yes, I'm talking about hiring. I am looking to hire some very top-end talent here in, in the, in the Silicon Valley, rest of America and Europe and Asia, and I'm interviewing people and I'm looking to, to hire people. So if, if you think that this is a kind of culture you want to work for, hey, give me a call. And that's what, just give me, send me an email, give me a call and I, and I give you my word, I'll respond to you within 12 hours. Where are people going to be based? They're going to be based here in the U.S. here in Silicon Valley in Detroit. We don't really care. We don't really care where, where, where people are based. It means nothing to us. A person can choose to be based wherever he or she is in India, in, in, in Asia or in, in, in Europe or in, in, in, in the U.S. As long as the work gets done, oh yeah. We expect them to be able to, to, to travel the rest of the world, to, to, to, to, to, to come to India as, as often as possible because our R&D center isn't, isn't India. But otherwise it, it doesn't, doesn't really matter where people are based. We're not looking at people to come to an office at nine o'clock in the morning and leave at five. We're looking at people with entrepreneurial ability. They can be stationed wherever they, they want. So the work needs to get done. So how many people are going to be in, in this organization now? How many? Well currently we have about a thousand people. But as far as the printed electronics the business is concerned. The kind of responses we are getting due to our products and all. The numbers can actually double within a particular period. So how do you define every kind of role? There are roles, right? Yes. How do you define the, the different roles in the organization? And what do you, what are you looking for? So, you know, we are looking for, for PCB design engineers. We're looking for electronics engineers who can do the schematic design. We're looking for product engineering heads. Hey, we're even looking for, for, you know, so these are the kind of positions we're looking for. We've been looking for very senior positions, technology heads, et cetera. Because the printed electronics brings a huge number of new, kind of like revolutionary paradigms and opportunities at R&D and new directions that haven't been done before. They haven't been done, been done before. This is the next revolution. It's exploration. Yes, it's the next revolution in the, in the tech industry. And the people, and so we are offering a very unique culture to people. A culture that's devoid of any kind of politics. A culture that's open, authentic, which does not have meetings, does not have performance appraisals. We don't compare with people with, with each other. And it's a culture totally based upon the principles of alignment. We align everybody and we are willing to be aligned. So if someone comes to us and says, hey, you know what? I'm not aligned to that idea. All of us, including our, our board, is willing to listen to the person and we are happy to change our, our, our minds. It's fine. It's exploration, but one of the challenges I see a little bit in the printer electronics, which I think is awesome and here I think I can show, there's lots of awesome, awesome, awesome things. The question is, how soon does this awesome thing become huge in the real world and not just prototypes, right? Yeah. Well, I think already the kind of, you see, we have already more than 70% of the Indian automotive market when it comes to our surface argumentation products. So when we showed our products to our current customers, just about everybody says, hey, guess what? I want this. So if you're talking about, you know, printing wires instead of creating, instead of making the real wires which go into a, to a, to anything into a, into a drone or into a two-wheelers, et cetera, and all of that, it's going to actually reduce the weight of that particular vehicle, you know, sometimes by 30 to 40 or whatever, whatever percent. So this is a, this is a revolutionary field or you talk about wearable products, I think wearable products have already begun. It's just a matter of time, I think within a year, just about everybody will be wearing them, especially the wearable medical devices. Sometimes my, my understanding of the challenges is a little bit to do with investment also. Yes. Sometimes there's amazing technology, but if there's enough investment in that thing, it will happen. Right. So how do you, is there a lot of investment coming out of, let's say, India, for example, because it's, it should be a no-brainer to invest in stuff that's going to change the world. So we are the only company which is investing in this technology right now, and all, all our customers are very invested in our, in our, in our products. So it's not just in India. India is the world's largest two-wheeler market. It's not just in India, but for the, for the rest of the world. European companies have already begun to invest and so has American companies and it's just a matter of a year to two years before this takes over everything. So the, the, maybe you can send me some information I can put under the video. Yes. The links and the contacts. Yep. And where people can contact you and ask what more, more details. Sounds good. All right. I'm very happy to do that.