Like every new business entity, GUS Education India (GEI) took time to take off the ground and hold itself up as a successful venture. All along, one team that witnessed this growth closely was Admin & Facilities Team. What started as a 2 members team in 2018 is today a 7 members strong squad looking after essential employee service verticals like housekeeping, transport, physical security, technical infrastructure, and support.
Anderson V.A, Senior Manager, Admin, and Facilities team joined GEI on Feb 26th, 2018 – exactly one month before GEI’s inauguration ceremony. Talking about his initial days at GEI, Anderson says, “My employee ID number is 84, meaning, I was one of the first 100 employees at GEI. I had worked with established brands in the past and so, I was not very sure about GEI – a brand that was still in the nascent stage of growth. More so, as the first milestone – reaching a headcount of 100 employees took time. Back then the headcount used to reach 100 and then go back to 98, 99. Those were the days when I used to wonder if the company will ever grow as the senior management envisaged. However, when things started gaining momentum for the company and the drastic growth that I saw - I had never imagined it even in my dreams! Today GEI is a 1200+ employees strong organization, spanning across 7 floors of the building where it started with less than 10 employees and a single floor…I am extremely proud to have witnessed and been part of this glorious journey.”
He goes on to share his experience of GEI’s inauguration ceremony - “Having joined days before the inauguration, there was a lot of pressure on everybody including myself. With Aaron visiting the Hyderabad office for the first time and Shashi trying hard to get the state’s IT Minister K.T. Rama Rao on board for the grand opening, the event had to be nothing but perfect. The countdown to the event had already started when I joined. Among the million things to do, there were accommodation arrangements to be made for Aaron and others, the branding and renovation within the office had to be completed before the grand ceremony, security arrangements had to be in place for the cabinet minister’s visit, an after-event party was to be arranged too. I can never forget those first 30 days at GEI – they went in a blur. Even on the day of the inauguration, Mr. K.T. Rama Rao was slated to arrive at 4:00 PM but he happened to arrive about two hours early at 2:30 PM! One can imagine the mad rush we all went into to start the ceremony before time.”
The inauguration ceremony was one of the most successful events that GEI ever hosted. It was the first time when Mr. Aaron Etingen, Executive Chairman and Founder, Global University Systems, visited the Hyderabad office. He was accompanied by Mr. Anton Zakharov, Chief of Staff, Mr. Graeme Simpson, Chief Marketing Officer and Mr. Valery Kisilevsky, Group Managing Director, GUS. The grand ceremony was bestowed with the gracious presence of Telangana’s honourable cabinet minister for Information Technology & Industries and Commerce, Mr. K.T. Rama Rao. The event was widely covered by prominent media houses and promoted across leading dailies.
"As a ‘support team’, it is imperative to accommodate the growth faster than it is happening and our Facilities Team has done a splendid job at that."
- Sreekanth Yagneshwar, Senior Director, Corporate Services & Special Projects
After the grand opening, there were continuous client visits at GEI. The brand teams visited to assess the caliber and talent pool that the company had to offer. Thereafter, as more and more functions moved to GEI’s portfolio, the company saw a surge in employee count and office sites. Facilities team was instrumental in accommodating this continuous upsurge by putting relentless efforts into running day-to-day operations while also, looking after the interiors/renovation work on the newly acquired sites. Every time the employee count increased, the Facilities team had to re-do the seating arrangements, making room for more seats within the existing floor plan without impacting the business flow – this process also entailed arranging/shifting machines, changes in transport rota, ensuring tech infrastructure sufficed the new developments, etc.
Gowtham Akkina, Admin & Facilities Specialist, shares his experience of working with GEI, “When GEI started its operations in Hyderabad I was working with iLabs’ security team (the tech park GEI is located in). Every day I used to watch Shashi (Managing Director, GEI) and Nikhil (Senior Director, Client Services, GEI) walk in and out of the office and, I used to wonder – what made these people pick such a large office space on rent - there were hardly 7-8 employees back then working for GEI. After some time, I moved from iLabs to join Inorbit Mall’s team (across the road). That’s when I started noticing GEI’s growth. Later when I joined GEI, the headcount was less than 300 employees and they were operating out of 2 floors. I was told the count will soon reach 600 and I used to wonder when would it happen and how? But, when things started picking up, we never got time to even breathe, let alone check employee headcount! There are no slow days at GEI for us. Every day there’s some new work, new challenges to resolve, a new adventure to take on.”
Today Admin & Facilities team falls under the purview of Mr. Sreekanth Yagneshwar, Senior Director, Corporate Services & Special Projects. Talking about GEI’s growth and the Facilities team’s role in the organisation, he says, “In the last 2 years, of which 1.5 years stretched into the pandemic, we’ve seen GEI grow 4x times! And it is still growing. The most challenging thing, however, is to ensure that this growth happens without disrupting the existing services. As a ‘support team’, it is imperative to accommodate the growth faster than it is happening and our Facilities team has done a splendid job at that. They’ve really pushed themselves throughout the last two years to sustain GEI’s rapid growth. I would rather call them the backbone of the company, for, if they are not around, we can’t set things rolling in the first place.”
According to Sateesh Yadlapalli, Admin & Facilities Specialist, his team’s strength lies in the way that they have been trained. “Thanks to our Manager, Anderson, we have been trained in a way that we know everything about everything. Within the team, we have separate verticals or jobs to take care of, but when an employee comes in, each of us attends the employee as ‘Admin & Facilities Team’ and helps the person with requisite solutions, simply because we know how every vertical is functioning.”
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