After successfully leading Jet Airways’ loyalty programme JetPrivilege for several years, Bijaei Jayaraj decided to start his own loyalty business in 2006. But, he soon realised running a business was more than just approaching your clients with great business ideas. It required organisational skills and an in-depth knowledge of financial structures. So, he decided to go back to a job, and worked with MasterCard Worldwide for the next two years with a clear focus—to understand the financial and organisational aspects of building a business. Loylty Rewardz was reborn again in 2008. Since then, Jayaraj has built a 185-people strong team, and counts the State Bank Group, Citibank and HDFC bank as its marquee clients. What he enjoys most though is inspiring his team members to be entrepreneurs in their own right. 

Growing up in a boarding school, I learnt to be disciplined from very early on in life. Even now, as a rule, I wake up around 5am. This is a big mantra of my work life. If I don’t get up on time in the morning, my day isn’t nearly as effective as it could’ve been. 

My day begins with exercise. The first thing I do is go to the gym for an hour to hour and a half and run on the treadmill. There’s nothing like running to get your mind work. It gives me a lot of time to think about my business—from short-term concerns like the agenda for my day ahead, a stock taking of the day gone by, or larger issues about where we really are as a company. My running routine helps me clear my thoughts and bring things in perspective. 

Once back home, I get ready to go to work, and usually just grab some fruits on my way out. I leave for office around 8.30am, and don’t have time for an elaborate breakfast. Fortunately, I live close to office. It’s just a 15 minute drive away. Usually, I make a couple of non-work related calls while I am being driven to office—either to my parents, or to my wife while she drops our children, my eight-year-old daughter and my five-year-old son, to school. 

By 8.45am, I am in my cabin and start organising my day. Even though I am extremely digitally savvy, I still do this bit on paper. This time of the day, till about 10am, is one of the most productive parts of my day. I spend it having quick conversations with my key team members, going through their plans for the day, and getting updates on client meetings lined up for the day. 

Nearly 80 per cent of my time is spent with people. We have an interesting routine for meetings. Our office is on the MV road, just off the Andheri-Kurla Road, and barely seven minutes away from the Mumbai International Airport. Sometimes, when I need to have a conversation with somebody in my team, and it’s likely to take around 10-15 minutes, I say—let’s go out. We trudge up to the top floor of the office building which is usually empty to watch the planes land and takeoff. It’s a great setting for a one-to-one conversation. I like to be informal and friendly with my team. In fact, the word irreverent fascinates me. If my employees question me, I welcome that.

I’m far from being a tough boss. Actually, I’m barely a boss. I don’t get tough with anyone. I don’t jump on people when they do the wrong thing; I focus on inspiring people to do the right thing. Honestly, sometimes I feel that it’s a weakness. 

 I’m not a tough boss. I focus on inspiring people to do the right thing.

But, the flipside of that is the strength of being able to bring people together and motivate them to do unthinkable things. I often tell our people—it doesn’t take great people to do great things but ordinary folks to do extraordinary things, and achieve success. I’m proud that at Loylty Rewardz, we’ve been able to create a culture where people can truly become entrepreneurs within the organisation. Personally, I value that. I don’t want to get in the way of people coming up with suggestions and ideas about the new ways we can do things. For instance, someone came up with the idea of screening movies like The Secret or A-Team on every Saturday. These screenings have a dual purpose—both to have fun, and collectively learn from them. It was a great idea. There are many ideas like that at Loylty Rewardz which is driven by different people in the team. 

Fortunately, not just with employees, my relationship with clients is as strong too. Fundamentally, I’m a business development guy so I am very hands-on with all our clients. I work very closely with our commercial team that goes and gets clients and manages the relationship. In fact, my client delivery, client service and client acquisition teams are the ones I spend maximum time with. We collect a champagne cork for every client we get and place it in our conference room. Each cork has the date and the client’s name written on it. I think we have collected about 13-14 now. Today, our clients are mostly gigantic banks—the State Bank group, Punjab National Bank, Bank of India, Union Bank, Central Bank of India, Federal Bank, Karur Vyasya Bank. Cumulatively, we manage loyalty programmes for almost 117 million customers across India. 

When we began, we wanted to focus on travel loyalty because I had a deep understanding of that space, thanks to my stint at Jet. Later, working at MasterCard gave me a decent understanding of the credit card domain. So the idea was to do something with credit cards and travel loyalty. Loylty Rewardz was conceived to do that. Early on though, we realised that airlines aren’t very gung-ho about loyalty programmes because the airline industry is not exactly rolling in money. On the other hand, banks have the appetite to on-board a new initiative. They’re prepared to foot the initial costs if it results in deeper engagement with the consumer. 

I live this credo—work very hard but stay thoroughly disappointed.”

As expected, during the early days of the business, I was deeply involved in every aspect of the work. Each slide of the presentation was prepared by me. I used to make entire proposals myself, and micromanage everything. But now I am more of a keen observer as other teams and units have taken over these roles. To be honest, I liked that intensity of involvement. I miss it. But, I know it’s counter-productive for the company because if you continue to micromanage, you can never scale up. It’s hugely important to let go. Yes, sometimes things don’t get done the way you wanted, and I would feel more satisfied when I do it my way. As an entrepreneur, this is a key adjustment. You have to learn to be satisfied when other people do it their way. It’s not easy to do that though—to make sure that you’re just guiding people only when necessary, and not jumping in to do everything yourself. 

For this approach to work, you have to get the company culture right. In fact, that’s a key priority area for me. I consciously think about, and act to build on our organisational culture. In fact, we have specific meetings, beyond client issues and business development concerns, to examine how we are working—whether we are transparent in our practices, do we set timelines justly, or are we doing too many late nights? Bringing issues down to a few simple questions is a very effective way for taking stock and making decisions. 

We deploy this when we are hiring also. After an interview, we simply put three questions in front of us —can she do the job, will she do the job, and can she fit in? The “can” evaluates a candidate’s basic smarts and intelligence, not experience. Relevant work experience isn’t a big issue. Most things can be taught. Once that box is checked, we ask ourselves whether a candidate “will” do it? I’ve often seen extremely smart, intelligent people who are not driven. If someone comes to us, and says she wants to work here for a year and then go to Harvard University, we’ll hire her. These are people who want to achieve something in life, so that one year with us will be great! I conduct most of the interviews at the upper management level and often ask the question—do you want to change the world—to understand a candidate’s drive.

People often ask me where I get my energy from because I am in the office by 8.45am and leave anytime between 9 and 11pm. Given that I have a hurried breakfast, and that I usually skip my lunch, I’ve realised that my energy comes from what I do. Even in the fourth year of our company, I am still the guy who has turned off the lights of the office the maximum number of times. 

Just before leaving office though, I spend an hour or two to clear my mails. I receive about 150 mails in my inbox everyday; most of them are just copies. But I make sure I read all of them because I am crazy about information. I tell my people I would rarely interfere with their work but I insist to be marked on all mails, not just with direct team members but even their team members. This gives me a holistic view of the organisation, and I know what is going on in each department. 

I’ve realised that my energy comes from what I do. Even in the fourth year of our company, I am still the guy who has turned off the lights of the office the maximum number of times. 

Because I leave early and come back late from office, my wife and my two children have a special arrangement about how we spend time with each other. I tell my wife that you cannot run a start-up half-heartedly and you can’t have children growing up without a father. So we adjusted to the whole situation by making our kids sleep late at night. Unlike kids who go to sleep at 8.30-9pm in “good” households, our kids sleep at 12.30am in the night. That way, whenever I reach home, I am with the kids for an hour and a half or two. Despite the intense hours I work during the day, I remain close with my children. I play Temple Run and Angry Birds on the iPad with them, have pillow fights and give them elephant rides. They catch up on their sleep during the day to make up for their eight to nine hours of sleep. I hit the bed around the same time they do.

There are no weekends in an entrepreneur’s life either. I work most Saturdays and some Sundays. If there are some senior level interviews lined up, my team knows they can schedule it around 11am on Sundays, I’d conduct those and be back home by lunch. Sometimes, I even go to the office in the second half of the day since office is so close by. 

 I take a break once in four Sundays. I just sleep that day, and do nothing else. I try to live my life by an aphorism that was passed on to me by Sumantra Ghoshal, the founding dean of Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, when I completed my MBA in strategic marketing and leadership in 2002. He said—go out, work very hard and stay thoroughly disappointed. So, I do just that. I work very hard and never find myself content.