Au Revoir

On 18 Sept 2006, I started this blog. To write about the fun filled culture of FritoLay, India. To get it going there was a short 3 min video of What is it Like to Work for FritoLay? That video uploaded on Youtube (click here to watch it) got us a lot of eyeballs. Research (basically that means all the people I spoke to) showed us that it was the first place for candidates to get a feel of the culture of PepsiCo's Snack division in India. Candid confession: When I saw that a lot of people were using that to decide on whether they would fit in to this culture or not, I did feel a tad bit inhibited and stopped doing videos of giggling employees on candid camera kind of stuff. Thats was truly tempting given the number of applicants who wanted to come into work in a giggly environment! Honestly - someone did say that to me.

Thereafter the focus was more on describing all the fun moments at work. The innovative people that we have here inspired us to do more. The media and other bloggers took notice and we got a gazillion suggestions on what to put into the blog. That made me realize that the challenge in having an unofficial corporate blog are two. One is to avoid sounding like a commercial for the company. More than that is the challenge of getting more than a few enthu guys to post. How do we update the blog continuously and frequently?

Madhu Rajesh was our answer. Besides being a part of the Employee Communication piece of HR, she brought oodles of ideas and enthusiasm to the table with her stories on our efforts at being RJs for a competition (which we lost miserably!) and many more.

Meanwhile it is time for me to say goodbye as I choose to pursue my dreams outside of FritoLay. So this will be my last post on the Frito blog - heck nothing stops me from commenting on the posts as a reader does it? So maybe instead of saying goodbye, I should say Au Revoir.

I Am One Year Old on 18 September 2007

On 18th Sep 2007, this blog turns one year old. Maybe one year young. It was started on a lark. One fine day, I started this blog because creating a blog is easy. If going to the moon was easy, I would give that a shot as well. This blog was meant to give you an idea of the culture of this organization and share with you some pictures of the people here.

When your friends come home, you talk about work, moan about life and crib about lack of time. Then you pull out your album and show them photos of friends and people at work. Based on that chat and the pix, your friends have a glimpse of what your company is all about. This blog was meant to be the same.

During the year gone by, we have had more people joining up to blog for us. We have had people sending us messages to say they want to work for us, they have given their feedback on our flavours and products. The blog has been featured and written about in the media and by other bloggers. Thanks for noticing us everyone. This is a time for us to stand up and take a bow. We appreciate your point of view. And yes, we are learning from all what you tell us. So thanks again.

We will have a party on 18th Sep. Let me know what would be an innovative way to celebrate the birthday of a blog. Have you heard of an innovative way to celebrate a blog - not blogger's birthday?

How To Name It

I came upon the blog of Apu - whose blog it is on all matters corporate who lists all blogs run by Corporates. Her blog is called Cubically Challenged which I thought is a cool title for a blog that describes the view from one. She is not sure if our blog can be put under the "corporate blogging" banner because it does not adhere to the strict guidelines of one. We are like this only, Apu. Reminds me of the musical masterpiece composed by Ilaiyaraaja which is simply titled "How to Name It".

Apu has rightly suggested that we pull up our sleeves and blog more often. The rap on the knuckles is richly deserved. We promise to make amends. I hope you will come back to track us.

There are some really happening blogs listed here. Check them out guys. And now it is over to Apu.

"I was interested in seeing whether companies in India have begun to use blogs as a means of communication with different audiences, and I did some digging around to see who is doing what. Surprise, surprise! I just can’t find too many corporate blogs in the first place. (Or my googling skills are poor!).

The usual culprits, which have been much talked about before, came to light again. First, the Infosys Blog, Think Flat. Now they have put together a star blogger team, with senior members from communication, marketing, sourcing, consulting etc besides Nandan Nilekani himself. But one odd thing about the blog is, that perhaps because of a number of contributers adding pieces whenever their schedule permits, the blog is very erratically updated. Sometimes articles follow each other after a day, and sometimes there are no posts for a week or ten days. I think regular updation is critical for a serious blog. Another surprising thing is that at the end of a page, there is no link pointing to ‘older posts’. One has to trudge through the archives. Perhaps they need someone who understands blogging and can help this senior team out by coordinating posts and having a more user friendly design. However, the content on the blog is quite good - while it touches briefly on Infy’s expertise, it doesn’t hardsell in any way, and in most cases, is quite interesting to read, though not phenomenally.

Then, there is Fritolay India’s blog, maintained by Madhu Rajesh and Abhijit Bhaduri from their HR function. This is really more of a fun, informal blog, and as such, the regular aims of ‘corporate blogging’ may not apply. However, I think they do a good job of presenting Fritolay as a young, vibrant place to work in. Definitely, if prospective employees came upon the blog, they would find it interesting and appealing. Again, the frequency of blogging is not consistent. I am not sure if they are thinking of this also as a means to keep current employees updated or whether they have a separate intranet/blog for that. But if they do want to keep current employees involved as well, then it may be a good idea to update more often.

I also came upon Tata Interactive’s blog, which is a mix of general interest article as well as those focused upon design and technology related issues. This one seems to be updated quite often, and also has a mix of regular writers plus guest writers. I suppose this helps them keep things in control, since the core blogging team must be monitoring content, ensuring updation and a good mix of subjects. Another notable thing about this blog is that many of the posts have atleast a few comments on them, something absent from the other two.

In the case of the Infosys blog especially, I got the feeling that they were operating in isolation. There was little dialogue with other technology blogs, few links to other bloggers - the posts aren’t really very different from what a website or maybe online journal might have. They don’t seem to be really blogging in that sense, since one of the most powerful things about blogging is the conversations and relationships it can build. So does it really help to maintain a blog if you can’t be active in the related blogging community?

Some of the lesser known ones - Giftex - a company that I’ve never heard about, but has a blog with quite good content on its area of operation, gifting. Score India, a sports development/promotion company that has a corporate blog that sort of goes all over the place and stopped running after October 2006. I am not sure what book launches are doing in there, except for the one on the Commonwealth games. And the formatting is terrible. Tekriti Software’s blog too has not been updated after November 2006, though the content was good, while it lasted!

Does your company have a blog? Let me know if you’ve come across any others that I may have missed out."

September 7th, 2007

FritoLay Blog features in Asia Times Story

The Asia Times story on Corporate Blogging talks about Indian firms entering the blogosphere.

M Raja says, "Software giant Infosys (US$4 billion in revenues in the current fiscal year) operates a blog, "Think Flat", with postings from its top brass including from Nandan Nilekani, the chief executive officer and managing director; Aditya Jha, the head of global brand and communications; Stephen Pratt, the CEO and managing director of Infosys Consulting; and Richa Govil, the group manager of its corporate marketing section. While the Infosys blog is heavier with shop talk, snacks major Fritolay started a blog this month offering a more informal report of office outings such as a river-rafting expedition on the Ganges River and events in the company factory. Abhijit Bhaduri, who runs the Fritolay blog, said it is getting popular with employees. "Corporate blogs will grow as we realize the ability to impact on opinions," Bhaduri told ATol. "Today people use networking sites for information about prospective companies even before they have joined work, like networking groups of all MBAs [masters of business administration] or engineers. The corporate blogs help you join the conversation."

Other corporate head honchos such as Rajeev Karwal have begun to publish personal blogs. Karwal's blog says it's intended to "express gratitude to people, organizations, stories and situations which have taught me some important lessons in professional and personal life".

What we discover is that there are many avid bloggers from Frito who we keep bumping into in the blogosphere who blog about corporate life/ life in Frito and their points of view about how the world needs to be run and all that. Here's power to bloggers.

Read the story here http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/ID25Df01.html