Power of virtual team: Slashing Cost Not Innovation

When I decided to start my own venture the main challenge was to have an office space and an efficient team including highly creative content developers, experienced teachers, website developers and expert data entry people etc. Having all under one roof was an uphill task for me so I decided to hire a virtual team. This helped me to bring together the experts and specialists from across the globe to work together on our project.

Working online means that your staff can reside anywhere, but it also means that you must need to become part of their day. You need them to know that you are always available even though they can’t see you. It wasn’t easy to develop trust in a virtual team so I decided to allot work in the form of small assignments and this really helped me to develop trust in each other. As our physical locations were different so we overcame the communication challenges by doing video conferencing, phone discussions and detailed email updates.

The main advantage of having a virtual team is that both employers and employees have flexibility to work and it also reduces time to market. Another benefit of having a virtual team is cost savings and the organization can avoid huge expenses on real estate, office spaces, utilities bills and executives’ travel. Thus production cost also decreases if you have a virtual team.

While making a virtual team this is highly important to ensure that you both are in agreement regarding scope of work, job expectations and roles. It is really helpful for teams to establish norms upfront hence I defined clear expectations related to working hours.

If implemented effectively, a virtual team has many benefits for your startup and can be the ideal solution for many of the businesses. Studies confirm that virtual teams often offer better work outcomes than conventional work teams.

                                                                        By: Monica Singhal

                                                                        (Founder of Eduprash learning)

A journey from an Educationist to an Entrepreneur

Monica Singhal, a Bangalore based passionate educationist & entrepreneur is as simple a person as her words and deeds and one of the few people who have chucked her job and started her own venture. She started her career in 2002 as a Botany Lecturer and over years gained significant teaching experience by teaching all age groups from pre-primary to degree college students. A stage came when Monica finally decided that family commitments had to take precedence. "My job as a teacher was satisfying but my time was never my own. There was always something missing.”She gave up on her job from Delhi Public School Bangalore in 2013 and started her own coaching classes and in 2015 Monica founded “Eduprash Learning” which offers the best in class Olympiad preparation material in the form of high quality and creative questions with the aim to build Olympiad champions. “We understand education is much more than text book. Hence, at Eduprash Learning we bring an innovative, fun based e- learning initiative to enhance and broaden the learning experience for overall growth of students.”

She has a virtual team of 22 people to translate her thoughts into actions. She has been associated with education for over 13 years now & enjoying life as a teacher, mentor, entrepreneur, counsellor, researcher, reader & above all mother and wife.

She firmly believes that “If you have a dream, a goal, you must go ahead to pursue it”