Startup organizational issues:a study in Indian context; read-ink technologies

Abstract

Read-Ink is a start-up company established in 2001, involved in Optical Character Recognition based out of Indira Nagar, Bangalore. It employs fifteen engineers and is in the midst of developing their first product. While the company has been doing well for itself in terms of gaining recognition amongst the customers in its domain, the firm is facing a number of internal problems. The growth of the company has been stunted due to a number of reasons. The attrition rate of the company is very high as many of its employees leave for other full-time jobs or for higher studies in India and abroad. The motivation of many of its employees towards their work has been steadily dropping of late due to certain conflicts in the organization. This has prompted different groups to form in the company that are currently working independently of each other. There is also a communication gap between the owners and the engineers as their motivations and ideas are different. In our analysis of the company, we conducted in-depth interviews with Mrs. Ione Binford, the CEO of Read-Ink as well as one of the engineers. We were mostly focussed on understanding the growth of the company over the years, the problems faced then and now and the road ahead. This was to understand the basic problems faced by the Indian start-up firms and identify the major bottlenecks in the process. With this data in hand, we proceeded to analyze the growth strategy, the lack of goal alignment between the owners and the employees, its HR policies with respect to the conflict management, motivation levels, communication and most importantly, its leadership issues. Finally we plan to develop this entire study into a case for the benefit of all to understand the areas where major start-up firms fail and the key highlights of the faults in Read Ink s growth plan and how it faltered. The analysis of the firm s issues and suggestions is based on our understanding and may change from reader to reader, based on his or her understanding.