Pandemic Silver Linings – Coping With Crisis at Ninestars

With 900 staff based mostly in Chennai, Ninestars is a significant technology and data processing supplier to MMOs and licensing organisations globally, including PDLN members Kantar, InfoMedia, NLA, and CFC. They specialise in time sensitive PDF transformation in this sector. So what do you do when the country goes into lockdown, and what do you learn?

In their case getting 900 staff operational working from home when the local lockdown came into force on Mar 22nd was the first problem. That required finding and buying 900 laptops and dongles, and re-engineering workflow dashboards to cope. Chief Operating Officer Chinni Krisnan has the advantage of a robust and modern production platform, and some notice (COVID hit Chennai relatively lightly). WhatsApp proved the secret sauce in allowing effective communication and support platform. Power supply interruption  is often an issue in India and moving from the resilient work environment to homes has forced the purchase of small UPS units for staff working from home.

Good things come from bad – though happily the bad has not included any staff mortality. The additional robustness of their disaster recovery was proved late November when they shrugged off a major cyclone. “We barely need to plan these days” says Chinni. “A cyclone WhatsApp group was set up in minutes, and everyone knew what to do”. Ninestars now plan to allow 30% of staff to work from home permanently, focusing on the more experienced. In some cases this saves huge commutes which are common locally. It also creates more resilience as they have a small army of expert and well trained staff available at any time. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. 

Ninestars COO Chinni Krishnan and staff

https://www.ninestarsglobal.com/blog/leading-through-the-crisis/