Growing Users and a Team in Unchartered Territory - Part 1

Speaker 1 Welcome to the life at Spotify podcast, I met and I'm Chris and we're going to be taking you back stage for a look at what it's like to be working and learning at Spotify today. We are speaking with amarjot, the MD for India, and the GM for Samia, also known as South Asia, Middle East and Africa. He will be telling us all about his journey leading new markets at Spotify and how he keeps his team inspired Speaker 2 by. This is our motive, glad to be here and Sharing my journey with all of you. I've been Spotify for five years now and John here. In 2018, it's been an amazing ride for me. I've been responsible for leading and starting the India business and over the last four years, since the time we have launched, India was the 79th market. So it's been a great journey and we are absolutely love brand in India. Now, recently, I've also got the chance to lead Other region which is south Asia, Middle East, and Africa, which is about 60 countries there. So that's been another start of another Journey for me a Spotify. So I'm enjoying that. And before that, I've spent almost 20 22 years in the Internet space in India, I've been in the business to business to mean, I've done a lot of work in the b2c space, which we call the business to Consumer companies like eBay where I spent five and a half years. And then I've also being mother key people, Pull in building the consumer to Consumer business in India before. I joined Spotify with a company called OLX where I built the, you know, classifieds business. And it was a great journey for me about nine years there and I have a huge passion for building a brand, building a business from zero to one. Also, to scale it up building, great teams being part of great cultures building businesses, which kind of impact people in very, very positive ways. And luckily, I've got a chance to With amazing colleagues. And now also I'm working with colleagues across the world with Spotify. So I'm absolutely having lots of fun Excellence. I've been the MD for India and the GM for Samia. What does that mean? Your day-to-day looks like, so, like I think maybe I can Define some here first, because I think you mentioned, it's a, it's a things, a new new term. Actually, we also side using it Spotify. This is a region which is signing literally like the whole of Africa. Oh, the whole of Middle East and the role of South Asia, 60 plus countries, almost 3 billion plus population more than 1 billion people who are today potentially using internet services and so on so potential user base for us and very exciting markets. Very deep Heritage. Basically, if you go back to the history of these other, you know, probably the deepest cultural history Heritage that you can find that. I think in these markets, we're very different markets move. Well, first markets, lots of it is Android first and huge youth population. We have a very very vibrant scene, mostly local music because all these places have lots of lots of local music coming up. Aspiring artists, who are not only breaking out in their own regions, you know, for the first time. But they're actually trying to go out to the global music scene. My role here is to, you know, build this feature in the interesting part is that this is like I said it's a new region is has got similar. Challenges and similar opportunities. They all at least one in one way can fit into the Emerging Markets though. There's some markets are really, really doing amazingly well, but they're still, you know, on the path to becoming really really the best version of themselves in the future. And I think we are privileged to be at Spotify to go in these markets to make a meaningful difference to the Creator communities and, and artist communities. And the listeners out there to bring the best audio experience to them. And Focused on actually connecting these regions in the best way possible towards with building a strong team finding out how we can focus on the right markets and Grill them up from. Then from there. And we want to make sure these markets could be, you know, still not there as yet. But we want to make sure that we put these regions which are very very important on to the world map of music and for us. These are these are very, very important markets. And we believe the future is going to be in these markets and you want to accelerate the growth Oh, they're very exciting. Speaker 1 That sounds like a really big job, especially spanning. As you mentioned, so many countries and with that, what skills did you need to acquire to be prepared to take on this kind of Speaker 2 role? Not so skills. I needed out there but I think at the moment, the one I am kind of reminding myself again. And again, is that I think I could start with that, I know nothing because if I, if I start thinking, you know, I know anything. Load such a huge region. Then I am starting up at the wrong foot. So I think, as I kind of a side working on this region, I have to, you know, start thinking from my sight that know, I need to kind of learn a so many things here and building, a strong sense of curiosity, willingness to listen to others and learning from people who are experts in their own business. Without having my own point of view, I think is the biggest skill needed I think and I'm trying to To you know get better at that. I think outside of that I think it's I've been you know Lucky in building lots of good businesses and building good teams. So there are few skills that I think I've been working on for the last many years and I think hopefully some of them will come to good use you know in this in this role for me and I think I've been probably pointed some of them would be like for example I think this is a huge region but how do I focus on the right things? And I think so having a very Clear Vision Is a very, very important part of the skills that I need to bring up and really be good at that. I think ultimately, we talked a lot sometimes, but, you know, we need to act because the talking won't solve our problems. So, high bias for Action is important out there, figuring out what I think works and what doesn't work, I think requires lot of deep analytical, understanding of what's happening, what's working? What's not working, so strong, analytical understanding to, you know, to drive growth. Oath and problem-solving is important. Nothing is absolutely clear or certain. And so I think dealing with ambiguity or dealing with uncertainty and being able to kind of find Clarity and find directions within that, I think is important skill we needed and then I think like we say I think it's requires a you know, a village to raise a baby. I think this is a region, I think it's multiple babies. So I think you know you will not be able to do it yourselves. You know it's about how you build an awesome team. And then, how do you bring the right people on board, but more importantly, how do you Empower them to kind of go out there and do the best job out there to work on these markets? That's the skill. I think working on and I think we're developing. Yeah, but I mean, I'm quite sure. This is not the full exhaustive list, but I need to dig deep to bring everything out there to do, justice to this amazing region. Then Speaker 1 I have a follow-up question. Essentially, this concept of having to analyze what's working and what's not Twerking and I'm assuming that comes with some failures. So my question is more about, how do you deal with making mistakes or failures within the region? Especially because it's unchartered territory. There are a lot of things you're probably trying for the first time and what's your what's your practice with dealing with that? Speaker 2 I think that's that's a very very important question because I think for me or for anybody who's trying to tackle All them play books, we don't have formulas to succeed. Okay, so I think we will have to go out and try things and these regions are different, markets are different. Languages are different about hundreds of languages in these regions very different. You know, the way people listen and so on. So I think the primary thought process on failure as a word I think is that the way to use that word itself is a very very important part. I think people sometimes are afraid to kind of use The server failure for themselves, I think I think my feeling is that we should use it more often to trivialize the world because otherwise you, it becomes a very heavy word somewhere there and I think that you know, for me success and failure, it's actually keeps happening to you. So you know, at some point of your failure you learn to succeed and that some part of a success you kind of relax, start relaxing and the failure happens I think in a way this is a part of part of life and part of working. The more importantly in this particular context, I think the way to learn to go to use failure to Advantage is that you need to try different things, you know, like if I was a Spotify product team, I would say it's called A/B Testing in A/B Testing, you try to three things and you know this succeed distance exceed you give this to a control group and this you don't give to a control group and you know all that all that jardins I won't bore everybody with that. But in a simplified terms I mean I would try out few things in the The market, I know something, you succeed, something will not succeed, so the willingness to take risk and willingness to go and kind of a do something is very, very critical. And then finding out and admitting to yourself that this worked in this did not work and being able to, you know, like, what work, skill that up, and what didn't work? Try to, kind of a fine, why it didn't work and trying to change the course and keep trying until the time you find the right formula is extremely critical. So I think that's one way to look at a failure. The other way I think is that failure is not necessarily a word in its own. I think, I also look at it failure from the, you know, it's a, it's linked to something sometimes we have a failure to, you know, failure to listen to people. And I think sometimes our listeners are telling us something. We are not able to listen, you know, our stakeholders are telling us something about missing. So I should be failure to listen and it could be a failure to acknowledge. Or it could be a failure to change course, or it could be a failure to, you know, like that our egos come in our own way to say something. So I think there are many ways to look at failures, but I think the more important part out there is when I look at successes that success will happen. The more you stretch yourself to making sure that you want to do something and you're ready to go and pick it out and meet completely honest with yourself and people around you, and that's why if you look at one of the culture values at Spotify, we have, I think, It's kind of a really correlates to this, this kind of a failure. So we have five values among which, I think there is this three values which intertwine for me to get to that and one is being sincere. So if you're honest about it, I think is very, very critical that you, you will talk about in. You will not hide bad results from people around you being collaborative means that you will obviously change it, talk about the best practices, but you will also share it with others and learn from others. That means you will not go out and reinvent the wheel. When Needed with somebody else is doing very well and do that. And I think outside of ring collaborative and being, you know, sincere there is something about her value being Innovative is that constant you know way to look at ha can be improved. How can we do something new? And I think something that spotify's empowered me a lot. I think in the last five years and I a try to empower my team is to go out and do new things. And we know that in these markets, people will not know all the answers so Go and try out new things and and give people license to fail that I think is a very important part and it's a culture, which starts from the top and goes to everywhere out there in the company of thank you for answering that. Like, I would agree that from my experience. I've seen the failure is just an inherent part of the Journey of being a Spotify, and it's probably the reason we're so successful. So thank you for bringing that to life for your area. Maybe I can add, maybe if you don't mind. I can add one more interesting. Talk to that. When you mentioned, it is in, In part of Spotify. I think I also reflected on that a bit more. And I realize that if you look at spotify's Journey for the last 15 years, I think Spotify has been pioneering business and, and not only painting business in the Western Market, but now it's also in every other Market that we are going. And I think that we all realize at Spotify and as we entered in build business in India, is it lot of things that we're doing for the first time? So nobody has done it before. So when you are a Pioneer, I think the Pioneer needs to take a risk. They have no option because in the end of it, they are not going to copy, you know, from everybody who's there, because there's nobody else who has done that before. So I think for Spotify, you know, embracing failure and being kind of a thriving and that and thriving, and how to do better has been a much more important because we have to be the Pioneer. And that's where I think I connect with your was your thought completely. Yeah. Excellent thinking. So changing. Gears a bit now. So your Rheem is quite Broad and across a lot of different countries, a lot of Areas. So I'm really interested in how do you balance all of these different areas and then keep the Spotify culture alive in these areas with their own diverse cultures? Yes I think that's when I kind of started looking at this region. I think I was quite overwhelmed at the amount of cultures and the languages and depth that I had to look at. And I think that's what. And I'm not saying that I'm underwhelmed right now, I'm still overwhelmed but I think the thing is that The first thing that I think that I have to cut of the stock thinking I'm doing right now is that, I think, personally, myself, and I think my whole team, we need to do it. We need to kind of a truly embrace the, you know, diversity that we have across the languages, which are even in India. There are hundreds of them, at least, 25 2022, official languages, and so on. So, I think there's so many languages, so many different cultures, so many different unique markets. So, I think how do we kind, build diversity? I think the second part 2 You know, building that up, is that? There's no, there's no one person who would know everything. So, I think, how do we build representation in within our own teams of people from these markets? So if you if you look at, you know, some of our offices across this region in India, you will find people from different states of the country or do you speak different languages if you go to a Dubai office you'll find about people with more than 30 40 nationalities actually. So you will have to build representation of Of people from different markets within the Zambia region and only, then we will be able to truly understand and appreciate and reflect on the culture. Deeply, these markets are completely different in their own ways, and means some of them are similar in many ways, but different in many ways. So we have to keep something which is foundational, you know, which kind of a relates to it. I think for us the Spotify culture is the foundation and the core thread under, which we believe our teams can then kind of go out. You know, like build on this diversity and build on this different things that is happening, but have a core framework on, which we can cut, Apple across them, and then, like, I mentioned earlier, I think the whole team and my snot me alone. I think we have to start the extremely about being curious. Collaborating a lot with, you know, not only among ourselves, but collaborating a lot with a global colleagues because, you know, this, these markets are humongous in many ways but they need. Need expertise of our Global colleagues, in different parts of the world in Stockholm and New York, and everywhere who are working on, you know, amazing Innovations. And so on to participate and learn from these markets, And that's also that I am doing. How do we, you know, educate not only ourselves, but how do we educate our Global colleagues on what's happening in these markets? And that's the responsibility that we have. And then I think most importantly, I think sharing a lot of what we are doing in building new best practices and lastly, you know, you should have fun. It's one of our values to we being playful. So I think it's important, we celebrate the milestones, we have me reaching in different parts of the world in and then enjoying those Moments. Because while the journey is good, the company is important and I think have fun while we do that actually. Speaker 1 So what would you say are some of the ways you've been able to build community among your team, especially spanning so many cultures, so many regions, so many nationalities. And then having that Spotify culture is the common Speaker 2 thread. The number one thing that I've been thinking, I think this is be involved by areas where I'm still trying to get better. And I think, and if you look at a global Mission, which Daniel has kind of outlined multiple times, it's about You know, unlocking the human creativity to bring millions of creators in a billion users to connect and higher livelihood and have a life on Spotify and make the world a better place. From the music perspective, I think this region is actually a place where millions of creators itself will come around. And like I said, it's the three billion population plus. So I think a lot of it will come from this region. So how do we kind of relate to our Global Mission? I mean that we have to build a common Vision. I mean Going together into this region. And like I said in the beginning, we are treating them all as Emerging Markets, I think under one umbrella, because they're still, not yet, they're in the world map of Music where we want. Want them to be a nun for that. A lot of it, that is happened for us in many parts of our markets Spotify now is in 184 markets. These markets insomnia region are very young. They are anywhere from 12 years old to 45 years old. So, so I think the best practices or the knowledge that we are building in these markets are still being built. So so we are obviously copying whatever we can from our Global markets, whatever, playbooks that have been built. But we are also realizing that we need to kind of build our local playbooks. And so what is the number one thing that we are doing is that we are trying to find the local playbooks in our markets here and we are building it in one market. It. But once we succeed, we take it to the other market and that I think is important, I think coming back from failure and succeeding, you will fail on many things. But if you succeed on something, don't let it go. Waste, use that same formula or use the same playbook in different market. So we've done that. And I think we've seen it, it's working in all these markets, so that's given us more confidence. That if something succeed is in 1 can be taken to other markets. The culture of experimentation is also extremely important. Which comes to the thing about how do we keep finding new ways to do that. So I have for example I have a we have a fund that we launched locally internally to you know we call it culture accelerator fund. This is internal term but I'm just sharing here because it's important to let everybody know and you know that we are truly caring about the local cultures we want to not bring the global cultures to the local market low. Take the local cultures in the local markets and make it stronger and then take it. The world. So this fund is all about building the local culture and how we can kind of a focus on that. And then I think we are also making sure that as the markets are scaling. People also need to scale. So I think at Spotify, I think we are an amazingly good at providing. You know, training programs, we have a greenhouse portal, which provides many many trainings. We have a very specialized team, which works across training across the markets and we do leadership, training, management trainings, you know multiple training. Things out there to cover, all our team members so that they can also see, you know, like it better and better and what they do because if people grow the business will automatically grow. And lastly, I think, I believe that the best work or the best Innovation comes when we are most passionate about, and Spotify is full of that. One of our values is being passionate, so we have lots of passionate people who are actually experts. Sometimes they are singers, sometimes they are podcaster. Something there from the industry is one, so they become. Up, very interesting passionate projects and I think some of the best ideas or best projects or best results come from them. So we also encourage people to kind of take up the things that they are passionate about because there's so much to do, you know, We hope you enjoyed the first part of our conversation with am are where we learnt about how he leads the team, keeping Spotify culture alive across different cultures and how we build community. We have loads more great content to share with you next week in the continuation of our conversation, where we will talk about growth challenges and opportunities in the India and Samia region.