What Got You Here, Won't Get You There/Abhi Ingle - Qualtrics, Data, Mumbai to Oberlin ~ Spark of Ages Ep. 13
Apr 12, 2024Season 1Episode 13
Rajiv Parikh
Have you ever witnessed a maestro at work, orchestrating innovation with the finesse of a seasoned conductor? Join us as we sit down with Abhi Ingle, a virtuoso of adaptability in the ever-evolving business landscape. From the startup hustle to the executive suites of AT&T, and now the pulse of Qualtrics, Abhi enlightens us on the symphony of maintaining a visionary mindset while embracing the ebb and flow of change. His tales are a masterclass in differentiating products through experiences, a journey that has seen him transition from the certainties of AT&T to the exhilarating prelude of Qualtrics' IPO.
The art of customer experience unfolds like a captivating narrative, and Abhi expertly narrates how enterprises like Delta Airlines compose their strategies by tuning into customer and employee feedback. As we navigate through this chapter, we uncover the delicate balance of empathy, rapid action, and anticipation in curating unforgettable customer journeys. Abhi's eclectic professional composition – an overture that began with McKinsey, crescendoed through Harvard Business School, and found rhythm in startup culture – illustrates the harmonious blend of traditional business principles and entrepreneurial innovation.
Our finale resonates with the exchange of ideas among industry virtuosos and the cross-continental collaboration that fuels the business ecosystem. The dialogue traverses the collaborative concerto between US and Indian teams at Position Squared, the partnerships that amplify growth, and AI's role in fine-tuning products and services. Tune in to this episode of Spark of Ages for a composition that's as insightful as it is harmonious, celebrating the shared crescendo of ideas that pushes the boundaries of what businesses can achieve.
Have you ever witnessed a maestro at work, orchestrating innovation with the finesse of a seasoned conductor? Join us as we sit down with Abhi Ingle, a virtuoso of adaptability in the ever-evolving business landscape. From the startup hustle to the executive suites of AT&T, and now the pulse of Qualtrics, Abhi enlightens us on the symphony of maintaining a visionary mindset while embracing the ebb and flow of change. His tales are a masterclass in differentiating products through experiences, a journey that has seen him transition from the certainties of AT&T to the exhilarating prelude of Qualtrics' IPO.
The art of customer experience unfolds like a captivating narrative, and Abhi expertly narrates how enterprises like Delta Airlines compose their strategies by tuning into customer and employee feedback. As we navigate through this chapter, we uncover the delicate balance of empathy, rapid action, and anticipation in curating unforgettable customer journeys. Abhi's eclectic professional composition – an overture that began with McKinsey, crescendoed through Harvard Business School, and found rhythm in startup culture – illustrates the harmonious blend of traditional business principles and entrepreneurial innovation.
Our finale resonates with the exchange of ideas among industry virtuosos and the cross-continental collaboration that fuels the business ecosystem. The dialogue traverses the collaborative concerto between US and Indian teams at Position Squared, the partnerships that amplify growth, and AI's role in fine-tuning products and services. Tune in to this episode of Spark of Ages for a composition that's as insightful as it is harmonious, celebrating the shared crescendo of ideas that pushes the boundaries of what businesses can achieve.
Hello and welcome to the Spark of Ages podcast, where we're going to talk to founders, innovators, ceos, investors, designers and artists I'm talking game changers about their big world-shaping ideas and what sparked them. I'm your host, Rajiv Parikh. I'm the CEO and founder of Position Squared, a growth marketing company based in Palo Alto, California. So, yes, I'm a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, but I'm also a business news junkie and a history nerd. I'm fascinated by how big world-changing movements go from the spark of an idea to an innovation that reshapes our lives. In every episode, we're going to do a deep dive with our guests about what led them to their own eureka moments and how they're going about executing it and, perhaps most importantly, how do they get other people to believe in them so that their idea could also someday be a spark for the ages.
Rajiv Parikh:
This is the Spark of Ages podcast. It's my great pleasure today to have my close friend, Abhi Ingle on today's Spark of Ages podcast. He's joining me here from Park City, Utah, where we're having our Growth Marketing Summit an exclusive gathering of 30 top business and technology leaders, especially those who are close to the go-to-market and marketing world. Welcome, Abhi, so great to have you here with me.
Abhi Ingle:
Thanks for having me, Rajiv, looking really forward to learning from everything that you guys have here and hopefully giving back as well.
Rajiv Parikh:
You will definitely be giving back, from what I know about you, even if we don't ask for it. So one of the great things about knowing Abhi over the years is you've always been truly curious about the world around you and you've always been the type that takes big risks and takes chances in terms of what you do. You've worked in early stage startups, later stage startups big, gigantic stalwart companies to companies that are in the middle of going public or on the edges of it, and you've scaled from working with small teams to super large teams. So I'm just I think this is super fun to talk about, as in this whole segment about this series about innovation, because in doing all those things, you've touched innovation in so many different ways. I think one of the things that characterizes your life is flexibility. Maybe you want to talk about how do you think about it when you go from all these different experiences.
Abhi Ingle:
You know that's a good question. I've never really stepped back and thought about it, so it's a good exercise for me to do that. But I'll tell you certain aspects I've always admired about people, right. So I think it was Albert Einstein who once said that change is a measure of intelligence.
Abhi Ingle:
The amount of ability to absorb change I'm sure I munched the quote right is a measure of intelligence, which is a very non-traditional way to look at intelligence, but I believe it does drive it, because you can actually be flexible but not deviate from what you're trying to do. So the way I look at it is visions can be permanent, but plans have to be tweaked, and that has served me in good stead, because the reality is, when you have a vision or you have a plan, you do not know what life is going to throw at you, and I think the silliest thing you can do is, when an opportunity walks in the room, you close the door. That's how I've looked at life, whether it is my own personal life and we'll talk about that as well or, frankly, situations in business.
Rajiv Parikh:
So let me go into one. So then you're at AT&T. Your career's flying, you are an officer at AT&T, which is a huge achievement. I always thought you'd be the CEO of AT&T. That was my sort of like. To me is like the prototypical CEO. One day immigrant comes here, kicks ass, rules the world as the CEO, but instead you decided to take the plunge on a company that was doing well, that was on the verge of going public, but you jumped to that right From a defined path a fairly defined path that you'd built up over 17 years, to this unique company called Qualtrics.
Abhi Ingle:
You know it's an interesting point and you know this is how it happened in the pandemic. And the pandemic gave me some time to step back and think and I could not be more grateful for AT&T. Where else would you get the chance to start up three different billion dollar businesses the IoT business, the mobile data business, what we now call the FirstNet business? But at the same time, there was a hunger, because I'd been in the same industry for a long period of time and the company had gotten really big 250, 300,000 people and nothing about the company.
Abhi Ingle:
It was my own personal desire to go and make newer change happen and learn, and that's what keeps me alive, keeps me fresh, is when I'm learning, when I'm challenged, when I'm pushed in a situation where I have to think on the fly. And I was looking for something smaller that had a huge growth potential and a massive total available market and that also personally appeared to me. And one of the things I've been noticing was that experiences mattered more and more. While we spent all of this time trying to distinguish ourselves on features and functionality and speeds and feeds, the reality was to a consumer, wasn't knowledgeable, it all kind of looked the same and we wanted to get into creating experiences. And then Qualtrics comes along. They're the lead in the experience management space, okay, and they're about to go public, when I understood that this wasn't just about surveys.
Rajiv Parikh:
This wasn't a survey company.
Abhi Ingle:
It wasn't a survey company.
Rajiv Parikh:
We see it as a survey thing, you know you fly United or you fly some airline and you get something back and it's a Qualtrics survey You'll see that and it says, you know, rate your experience one to 10. You're like, oh, that's easy to do. How did a company like that become something that could actually go public, get to such heights? But you saw it differently, and I'm sure they saw it differently too. These guys were smart folks.
Abhi Ingle:
Well, it's interesting when I was talking to them, I actually challenged them about this situation, and that's always a good lesson when you challenge them, how do they respond? How did they respond? Did they respond angrily or did they tell you? Let me educate you on how we see the market. It was a master class in being educated in terms of how they saw the market differently than all the other dozens of what I just say small feedback survey companies that had followed in their wake. They didn't see this.
Abhi Ingle:
They found this as a way to make business more human, because being human is about being able to listen, understand, empathize and allow somebody to state a point of view, and that's how Qualtrics built their system. So today, what Qualtrics does is it allows you to deeply tune into a customer. What you're asking them, what we call solicited information, what they're doing digitally observation and then what is unsolicited, what they're doing digitally observation and then what is unsolicited, what are they doing when they call into the call center, when they're posting on social. So we put all of this information into one longitudinal record that we call experience id. So, in essence, we allow a company to understand the longitudinal record of all the experiences a customer has had with them over time. That, combined with the company's operational data and our massive database, allows us to say what is the most likely thing that will happen, and then we make each close the loop. If somebody had a bad experience, follow up with them and close the loop.
Rajiv Parikh:
So a simple example would be I'm sitting there on my airline and the airline asks me about my experience and as it digs in with questions, they realize that I feel uncertain about where my bags are.
Rajiv Parikh:
I'm sitting on the plane, I'm fretting where my bags and then all of a sudden, over time, probably as a result I would say definitely as a result of looking at the data that they put into the system, the way people feel when they call the call center hey, where's my bag?
Rajiv Parikh:
I don't know what it is and probably realizing that when people don't feel uncertain, they probably ran surveys of like well, instead of you doing a carry-on, if you felt certain that your bag was truly on the plane, maybe you wouldn't do that carry-on and take up all that space and give it to those who only need it from an essential point of view, and I could speed up the time that you get on a plane. So all that data together then comes into an app that says, oh, it's tracking your bag. And now you're like, oh God, I gave my bag to them. It told me they got my bag, it's on the plane. I get off the plane, it's delivering it to the carousel. Is that some of the insight that you can pull together from all these experiences.
Abhi Ingle:
Absolutely, rajiv. You're giving a great example of what I say is an evolved form of experience management. People think experience management is about surveys and getting the results. The reality is it's not. It's about understanding your customers really deeply and then closing the loop. And there are two types of closing the loop and I'll borrow shamelessly from the Bain theory on this topic.
Abhi Ingle:
The concept of NPS. One is the inner loop, which is Rajiv has a bad experience. I personally talk to Rajiv. Make sure his bad experience is closed. Then there's the category of problem that got Rajiv into the problem and is affecting hundreds, maybe millions of other people that you go and fix structure. That's an outer loop change. What our software is set up to do is that this ingestion engine, which understands and helps you deeply, tune in to customers and also, by the way, employees okay. Then it tells you what an experience record and tells you what's going to happen. And then we have workflow integrations into every system of record Salesforce, servicenow, slack where we close the loop. That action orientation is what matters more than the absolute score.
Rajiv Parikh:
So now you can see when I have my United app up and it shows now up on my. It's like that smart display at the top and it tells me how many seconds before my flight I landed. It tells me that my bag's been delivered. That's all part of that system. So they've given Qualtrics access to all these systems.
Abhi Ingle:
So I'll give the example of Delta right, which worked very closely with them, and Ed Bashan has been on record talking about this, so I can actually talk about it right, but one of the most disruptive elements of what happens in airlines is the service disruption. If you think about it, airlines is a tough business. You know three of the most important factors the weather. The airports are not within the control of airlines and, oh, by the equipment they use. For the most part, every airline uses the same two pieces of equipment.
Rajiv Parikh:
Remember, in business school, they made us study airlines all the time, because it was the closest thing to perfect competition. Correct and other than Southwest. It was considered a pretty crappy business.
Abhi Ingle:
But Delta has really reinvented their business Right. They really took it, taken it and Ed does this top down from the top. He led this. But they've got understanding and listening to the customer so deeply embedded both in their digital app, in their internal systems and, frankly, they have the information on each of the staff members' elements either. So when somebody comes in like you who might be a top-level flyer and walks in and they know that you missed your last two connections, you might have somebody come over and give you handwritten or says, mr Parikh, we're so sorry, you missed your last two connections.
Abhi Ingle:
I've gone ahead and taken a look. Your next connection should take only about 10 minutes to walk over. We're supposed to land with 30 minutes with to spare. If there's a problem, I'll personally walk you over. Now you can't do that. By the way, for everybody. Let's say you're a Delta Diamond and I'm just an ordinary Delta Flyer. I might get a simple thing saying we're so sorry you missed your flights. We've gone ahead and credited Coupon into your digital wallet your next drink is on us.
Rajiv Parikh:
So nailing it before you have a problem, right, progressive insurance would talk about it. If an incident occurs, they know that by getting to you right away, personally, 100% that you're less likely to file a bigger claim later. Plus, you're going to be a lot happier.
Abhi Ingle:
That is correct, and if you think about what I just emphasized, it's very easy to be empathetic. One-on-one. Yes, okay. What we do through our system is we provide the ability to provide empathy at scale, listening at scale, and then the abstraction of that into actions that you can take to improve your processes, and also a data record which tells you what are the things that piss people off. Now, if you're not using that to improve your product development, as you started mentioning airlines are doing, or if you're not doing that, let's say, in car dealerships, right To actually improve the way you deliver service. That's on you. That's on you.
Rajiv Parikh:
You're providing all the tools and, to your point, delta. I remember going to an adage event where they said we are gonna. You know, we know how we're considered one of the poorest areas for buyer affection or customer love and we aim to change that. We're considered one of the poorest areas for buyer affection or customer love and we aim to change that. We're going to be one of the top five brands. So it's amazing that they've turned that desire to not just pretty colors and pretty slogans but actually to action.
Abhi Ingle:
Delta lives it top down. I've seen it firsthand. I could not be prouder to fly Delta these days, because they are really setting the tone for what kind of service an American airline can provide.
Rajiv Parikh:
We need them to build a bigger hub in San Francisco. So now let's talk about you. Were at McKinsey, right?
Abhi Ingle:
Yep.
Rajiv Parikh:
Post, getting a degree in computer science and mathematics. So you went down this pseudo-traditional path right where you learned a technology, but then you worked as an analyst at McKinsey and then you went to Harvard Business School. So you're on a nice path. A good Indian son would do that.
Rajiv Parikh:
A good non-doctor Indian son would do that and then you went back to McKinsey. Of course I'm sure it helped pay for business school and get you lots of other experiences at executive levels and change levels in terms of how people are changing companies. But then you went to a startup right, and then you went to AT&T where you built a $3 billion business over 17 years. So you did the startup thing, you did the big company thing, you worked with big companies at McKinsey. Then you went to AT&T. Why would you go to an old, stalwart, stodgy, fixed phone line type of company?
Abhi Ingle:
So I think you know you have to step back from this and think of the common thread that tries us all together, right? So yes, I did serve large companies at McKinsey. It was important for me because I did not have, before business school, a formal business education. I was computer science and math. I was all around peak and I'm proud of it too, by the way. Good math boy, good math and computer science guy. I coded since I was in the fifth grade and I'm proud of it.
Abhi Ingle:
I hide nothing from that perspective, but I knew I needed to understand how to speak the language of business to be able to communicate my thoughts and to achieve greater impact. Actually, one of my last assignments at McKinsey was one of the very first four equity studies we did and I got really excited about the hands-on work I was doing. It wasn't a traditional study and this company eventually was acquired by Amazon for $300 million, a company called Junglee oh, that's right. So you were working with a startup Exactly. And I realized at the end of that that, much as I loved McKinsey the firm, at some point I was only going to be advising and I felt the itch to operate. I felt the itch to operate, and 1999, 2000 in the Bay Area was like being in the Renaissance and not doing anything about it. So I jumped out to a startup I was passionate about. The company was Covad.
Rajiv Parikh:
We were bidding fit to completely change Our good common friend Rich Wong.
Abhi Ingle:
Exactly.
Rajiv Parikh:
Every time we'd sit together, we'd be selling you on joining.
Abhi Ingle:
That's right. That's exactly right. Rich and I worked together at McKinsey and he pulled me into Covad. He was the head of marketing and products and I came in as head of new products and it was an amazing experience and the kind of change we unleashed. We forced every incumbent to move. So I measure that from the perspective of what did you actually have impact on? It's not the prestige of the work you're working on or the perception of the company. What did you actually achieve and how did that align with your overall objective right? Similarly, I actually left Covad after the regulations changed and it squashed the growth of the company. But in the course of doing Covad we realized that we had built a really powerful distributed software system which really controlled our business.
Abhi Ingle:
It wasn't just a pure this is part of the broadband network revolution. Right, that's right.
Rajiv Parikh:
Back then we were going from these slow modems to high speed access for businesses.
Abhi Ingle:
Correct. And the only reason we tangled and were able to play with big behemoths which, ironically, I ended up working for later on was because we had a software system that controlled the entire process of provisioning, setting up and automating the process of setting these high speed connections up. So I left with a head of software engine to create a software company which showed visibility Think of it as a pre-cloud cloud infrastructure company right in the middle of the worst nuclear winter that the Valley has seen. That, by the way, is a good experience. 2000,. Let's just say that we actually ended up selling our company to IBM, but it wasn't a great exit. After which I stepped back and said I love driving change. What company and platform gives me the greatest ability to drive change? And a company that was in Seattle this is pre it being AT&T per se came to us and said hey, I need somebody from the Valley who understands software, who understands technology and business, to come in and build a business where data matters to businesses. That's what made me jump.
Rajiv Parikh:
That was McCaw Cellular right.
Abhi Ingle:
That was McCaw, which became AT&T, which was brought by Singular, which then got by SBC, which then merged with AT&T. So it wasn't AT&T for 15, 17 years. It was four different companies.
Rajiv Parikh:
You didn't say oh, I'm going to join AT&T.
Rajiv Parikh:
I'm dying to join this. At one point, at&t was built out of New Jersey Basking Ridge, new Jersey but this was a different AT&T. This was the AT&T name that went over to SBC. Right, yes, that the fixed landline business will eventually potentially transition, but then they went and got Macaw Cellular, which is one of the. There were two different ways of buying cellular frequency and they were the ones that did it the independent way and built their own network. So you were actually part of a pretty innovative culture in joining that company.
Abhi Ingle:
You've made a really interesting point that you know you're going from a small company, super innovative, to large, stodgy companies. I want you to step back and think about. In any company, small or large, there's innovation and there's opportunity if you can recognize it. But to do that requires, again, embracing change and being flexible. I'll just give you one example from within that company. We went in.
Abhi Ingle:
The cellular data revolution was in full flow and I realized that our device certification group was rejecting a series of devices and I couldn't understand. They would come to me for exceptions and I went deep into those and I realized there's a whole new class of devices which were not phones, were not classic devices, but people were embedding, literally almost illegally, cellular connectivity into physical objects to be able to understand the state of that object. And I suddenly realized this is not wrong. So what's an example? Exam the UPS, ups tablets, right? Okay, ups tablets needed connectivity on the fly. That's not a phone, right? But we used to put everything for phone test. How does it sound when you hold it to your ear? We would require to come into this store to actually activate it, which makes no sense. Makes no sense for a device of that sort or things that went into frankly waste, makes no sense. Makes no sense for a device of that sort or things that went into frankly waste oil bins. Is the oil full? Send me a sensor, dispatch somebody to empty the oil.
Rajiv Parikh:
The vending machine empty, send somebody to send it out. So completely different requirements.
Abhi Ingle:
Completely different requirements. So we built an entirely different system for handling these types of devices, which then came to be known as Internet of Things devices. This was the IoT platform.
Rajiv Parikh:
We started that from scratch, okay, in the year 2004 because you guys noticed the change, notice how people were using exactly in that difficulty we noticed those opportunity.
Abhi Ingle:
It did not jive with our current business practices. The easy answer was to reject it. Yeah, instead, we looked at it, we realized was a new and we actually built upon it that business today is a multi-billion dollar business for AT&T with over 100 million connected devices.
Rajiv Parikh:
So when you were there at AT&T post that acquisition, that was what you ended up doing, right.
Abhi Ingle:
That was part of the remit.
Rajiv Parikh:
Business devices for AT&T in probably one of the most dynamic and innovative areas of the company. You became a magnet for the innovative capabilities of companies, everywhere you went.
Abhi Ingle:
Correct In a way and if you really think about it, rajiv right that idea. You know, once we got that idea and we were able to build this business, it gives a lot of confidence. Then we realized, if we just watch what our customers did with the new smartphones, with the new tablets that were coming out, we realized that these were people who were doing mobile work. If they're doing mobile work, well, why won't we have a forms application? Remember when people used to walk around with clips, clipboards and forms? We had a big slogan which said clipboard with a big red X through it and we'd have a forms application served out of the cloud on a mobile tablet.
Rajiv Parikh:
Before cloud was a cloud.
Abhi Ingle:
Before cloud was cloud Right, and that's why we formed early partnerships with companies that did mobile device management, like MobileIron, airwatch, and we had forms applications from companies who were supplying forms, who partnered with Box.
Rajiv Parikh:
And all those companies were companies that weren't even around.
Abhi Ingle:
They were all just starting out.
Rajiv Parikh:
MobileIron was what we had Tea Hea Nahm on our podcast that was one of the companies that he loves to highlight that they funded and they talk about how they were so innovative because they saw something that other people didn't see Exactly, but they needed a partner to enable them to get there.
Abhi Ingle:
Exactly. And Tea Hea Nahm, bob tinker, ajay, who who were the founders, are dear friends now, all these days later, because at one point we took the risk to take into market they needed at one point we're 25 to 30% of their channel sales. I had the privileges of being on the NASDAQ when they invited me for the IPO. It's huge Right. We gave voice to startups in Toronto which did telematics right, right Fleet management tracking. 20 years later, I sit on their board.
Rajiv Parikh:
So now, what's something that's on the business side right, which is where you're primarily focused, but that also because of the business application. The business is always willing to pay more right Because they have a particular need that they can establish a return on investment on, but that eventually bled over to consumer devices as well. Where do you find that was happening at the same time?
Abhi Ingle:
It actually started the other way in some ways right, the consumer side started first because, if you recall, that same company in Seattle was the company that sponsored American Idol, if you think back to way back then. And we actually taught Americans how to text. Believe it or not, at that point in time Americans didn't text and that's what got American to text. Believe it or not, at that point in time Americans didn't text and that's what got American to texting. So texting revenues were actually the big data driver, but they didn't play that well in business. So on the business side, we had to come up with analogs for that. So we had business productivity, email remember Blackberry or the trio with good email.
Abhi Ingle:
So those were all solutions that we assembled to make this thing happen. So we thought about these as mobile, cloud connected devices where you could do your jobs on the flow, and we had to actually go into companies and teach them here's your process before mobile. We would do literally a series of process steps. We'd cut a whole bunch of the money and say this is your process after mobile. Who wouldn't want a field worker to go out and be able to do 20% more and when they come home they don't have to type in all the orders. They've done it on the fly.
Rajiv Parikh:
So in a way, in this one, in this form of revolution, a lot of times it's the more expensive usage is what drives the cost down for a particular innovation or network usage. In this case it actually went the other way, right, because they were texting on American Idol. They had texting. Texting was a thing in Europe.
Abhi Ingle:
Texting was a thing in Europe. We taught America how to text, taught.
Rajiv Parikh:
America how to text. At&t at the time was the primary sponsor for American Idol.
Abhi Ingle:
That's right.
Rajiv Parikh:
And, as part of that brand integration, I love marketing as you know they decided to combine those things together and popularize a capability that's driven the whole industry.
Abhi Ingle:
And we made AT&T synonymous with this new way in which you use phones. And we did the same thing on business. You'll notice we didn't sell technology into business. We sold them solutions to solve problems. You have a fast food restaurant. They're dispatching somebody every day who makes a round of all the restaurants to empty the oil, the cooking oil wastage. Why would you do that? We'll put a sensor in there. We'll send you a signal saying that oil is full.
Abhi Ingle:
And oh, by the way, we can now locate who's the nearest truck driver and dispatch them there.
Rajiv Parikh:
So would you say that in this case it was because enterprise a company's enterprise needs tend to be focused more on reliability and making sure things work at scale. In a way, it was lagging the consumer use. And you can take it to today with what's going on with AI, right in generative AI and all of us how involved we are with ChatGPT. We're okay with hallucinations for consumer use, but to get it to business today, that same generative AI has to be more reliable, so business may actually lag.
Abhi Ingle:
It's a great analogy and it's a great lesson to all of us that history tends to repeat itself. We didn't change, we didn't create new processes. We changed the process that existed to inject in real-time information and real-time location. Similarly, what AI is going to do is literally inject in real-time assistance, real-time solutions that change the workflow process to be far more efficient. Oh, by the way, in both situations, what makes a difference is real-time data. Data is king in both of these scenarios.
Abhi Ingle:
Data is king in both scenarios, if you can empower people with the data at the point at which they're going to take action. You have created tremendous value.
Rajiv Parikh:
If you were to sum up your experiences in these companies and kind of how you went through all this, what would you sum it up as?
Abhi Ingle:
You know, I like to think of myself as a builder and a pace setter in terms of what I do, because when I go in and I see an opportunity, the idea is how do you build and get a group of people to get excited about that opportunity and then build it at speed to get something that will actually result in a real business? In that situation, you paint a vision of that city on the hill that you're all marching towards and the actual plans to go there, honestly, are going to change every year. It's pretty interesting. I get calls from kids who are just graduates from business school. They're like what was your 15-year plan? Or when you get interviewed, they say what's your five-year plan?
Rajiv Parikh:
But you did have one.
Abhi Ingle:
I always have had a five-year plan, but my five-year plan gets revised every year. That's right, okay, that's why I say the vision can be fixed, but your plans have to be flexible. If you're not taking in the input of what presents itself, you're really missing the dynamic changing world that we live in.
Rajiv Parikh:
Be willing to change, be open to change as you drive towards a larger vision.
Abhi Ingle:
Correct, and it's okay to take another path if you see an option that you didn't know of before. Right, and that, by the way, applies to my personal life as well Awesome.
Rajiv Parikh:
So would you characterize?
Abhi Ingle:
that as what got you there won't get you, what got you here won't get you there. Look, I mean it's 100% true. That was true for my personal life. If I look at the story of Qualtrics right, which I'm so proud of the company I'm at right now, they started off as a research enterprise survey feedback company. They pivoted that into an experience management company and we got an even larger vision right now, which is making business more human. As the company grew, as they realized what people were using that research product for, they created custom-built customer experience projects, employee experience products. If they had just stayed an enterprise survey company, where would this company be today? It would have died. Huge kudos to Ryan Smith, zig Serafin, jared Smith and all the people who came in and built this company to what it is right now, and he had to be part of it, so that's awesome.
Abhi Ingle:
Amazing, and I'm just privileged to have become a part of it.
Rajiv Parikh:
Awesome, Abhi. You talked about how that flexibility in how you work in business, the desire to build businesses with innovation and having a plan, but revising the plan and so that's what you do in business Is that what you do in your personal life as well? You know what you do in your personal life as well.
Abhi Ingle:
You know what you did in my personal life and I took that philosophy over into business a better way to think about it and, honestly, it wasn't planned, it happened and then I made it a habit. Okay, I just started my life Like my parents. I grew up in Mumbai, india. My parents were both doctors. They were both prominent doctors in India. My sister was going into medicine. We owned a clinic in Mumbai. Okay, the natural thing for the good Indian son to do would have been a doctor.
Rajiv Parikh:
Be a doctor. Okay, you might even start up a hospital.
Abhi Ingle:
That's right and I was good in all the sciences, as you know, was required for a kid from that household. But I was very lucky to have parents who did not actually rigidly climb into that. In fact, my mom enrolled me for a summer course in this new thing called computers and coding In my fifth grade summer. I was horrified. Four, five hours a day, four days a week in the summer. Mom, I'm not doing this.
Rajiv Parikh:
And why would your mom want to put you in that?
Abhi Ingle:
Because she my mom and my dad grew up really poor and we were solidly middle class and they wanted us to have all the things that they didn't have. So literally my mom would come back every week with a new idea. I read about this new thing called oceanography. I would be interested. I'm like mom, for God's sake. So she said look, I already paid for the course. Why don't you go for the first week?
Rajiv Parikh:
They got you on the paying for the course.
Abhi Ingle:
Put it way, I went there and I fell in love. I just took to coding like a duck to water and just loved it. I had a couple of really great friends and while we were in high school itself, come eighth and ninth grade, we were selling commercial software. At that point in time the course of my life changed because I was thinking at some point in the future I'll probably go to a great engineering school in India, I'll go overseas to America for graduate school.
Rajiv Parikh:
Go and get into IIT.
Abhi Ingle:
Exactly. But at that point I realized that I probably should get a good grounding in India and, slow and behold, everything changed. That's what my parents wanted. They were hoping I could go to school in India, maybe even get married, before I go off to the US, right have the classical You'll find you a good girl.
Abhi Ingle:
Exactly right. But then I also used to be the captain of the quiz bowl team and in a quizzing competition that we had we won the tournament and we were at the Bombay National History Society. A gentleman in the front row approaches me. He's from the United States Educational Foundation in India and said young man, have you ever thought about studying in the United States? I said well, for graduate school. He's like no, for undergrad. I said I can't afford it. He says there's no scholarships for undergrad, he's like there are in a few select places. Here's my card. I sat on the card for three weeks, tortured with these thoughts, finally gave him a call, went down there, looked at the campus, looked at the arrays of computers lying there waiting for me and I went and talked to my parents. I said nope, too young, too impressionable, don't do this right.
Rajiv Parikh:
And I said, mom, dad, you've never said no, by the way. That it's it's a natural thing back then to it got then, and even today, to believe your child is. There's a whole different maturity to leaving home, leaving country, going to a new culture, knowing that your kid's going to be just fine. In that, I mean that's a natural.
Abhi Ingle:
Trust me, rajiv, they were right, because I got to tell you I was pampered. Yeah, Okay, growing up in a middle class Indian household, you can live pretty well. You can live pretty darn well. I had a driver. We had somebody wash I don't think I even washed a plate in my life so I was book smart and practically useless. Okay, just putting it out there, right?
Rajiv Parikh:
right when it's in America, you gotta do everything. And oh, by the way.
Abhi Ingle:
I had never even been to the US as a tourist, that's true. Okay, I was 18 years old. So finally the lender said, okay, fine. Finally they relented and said, okay, fine, if you get a full scholarship, you can go. They regretted that because two months later I showed up with a full scholarship from Oberlin College in Ohio Amazing, and they were freaked out. But they held good to their word and I landed there Never having been visited before.
Rajiv Parikh:
In a way, your mom got what she wanted right. She kept driving you towards the next great thing. That's right whatever is potentially interested, or she was just looking for something that would drive you, that would spark you yes, and she sparked me.
Abhi Ingle:
I'll tell you that I think some of the sparks burnt her because she, she, she had a worst fear, come to which is her husband but, as I said, I I owe so much to the my parents because had they not set up that culture of constantly want to do something new, learning, I'll tell you, the most important thing they taught me was striving and constantly being a learner, and with that came change and flexibility and the ability to adapt.
Rajiv Parikh:
Was it them pushing you or was it you watching them? In terms of what they did?
Abhi Ingle:
You know I grew up in an intergenerational household, so we grew up in a joint Indian family. So my parents' parents lived with us and their stories inspired me. My maternal grandfather was orphaned at the age of six in the Black Plague in India and he had to be first every year when his relatives took him in because there was one scholarship, one scholarship. So if you know sort of old high caste Indians, they had this little knot at the top of their head. He would tie that to a light, so if he fell asleep he would wake him up and he would study all night so he could be first every year Because that is his only hope. My paternal grandfather came up from a village. There was no electricity in his house. He would walk a mile to sit under the highway where the lights were to study. That inspired me. They sold everything to set my parents up. My parents put all their money into education and the values that we got, and in three generations, education and that striving for improving yourself has gotten us to where we are.
Rajiv Parikh:
So you got that amazing example in front of you. Did they put it in your face and push you, or did they just watch you as you went? Because, look, this happens a lot in immigrant families, which drives sometimes kids to anxiety, right, or it pushes them so hard they're pushed to the edge, and a lot of us deal with that as parents of kids who feel that pressure. But was it more like okay, here's the example around me. I have that feeling of being driven, or were they on you?
Abhi Ingle:
You know, rajiv, that's a great question because, look, I'm not unfamiliar with the concept of the Asian tiger parents, right Of which Indians, are a big contributing factor. Let's just be honest about it. Sure, stereotypes come for a reason, right? Yeah, those were not my parents and I was very fortunate because I had friends who were suffering. Yeah, and my parents never really pushed me. They laid out what was possible, they said this was possible and I knew that if I didn't do well, they would be disappointed and just the act of watching them conduct their lives okay was an inspiration to me.
Abhi Ingle:
The example of my grandparents in the same room as me. I shared a room with my paternal grandfather, so the funny thing is he actually was in a British firm. That's why my English is far better than my parents' English. When my parents went to school in independent India and studied in the native languages out there, my grandfather was fluent in English. My paternal grandfather was an engineer, so my math comes from him. So a lot of who I am was shaped by the intergenerational family experience I grew up in. It also taught me to be empathetic and tolerant of differences. It's a lot of things to have to be living with three generations in the same house, especially when you share a room with your grandfather. That's amazing.
Rajiv Parikh:
I never knew that you did that, and so you had that active encouragement, you had that active respect for your elders.
Abhi Ingle:
Yes.
Rajiv Parikh:
You built empathy for what they did. It helped translate to your ability to speak really well. I know a lot of folks from India that come from English standard schools, but your English is impeccable. Thank you Even beyond that, and it's because you care so much about all these things right that you have this desire to be precise as well as be open to change. You talked about how you took that computer science course as a kid. Would you characterize that as your spark moment, your eureka moment, that all these things were possible?
Abhi Ingle:
Was there a moment or?
Rajiv Parikh:
was it a series of it?
Abhi Ingle:
There's a series of moments where I would say there are decisions that you make that shape your life. The decision my mom made for me with that course exposed an array of opportunities to me. The ability to then go and exercise in the United States was a very big decision that I could not have taken without the support of my parents and, frankly, from the people from the cause. You took put a bet on this kid from Mumbai who went to a public school. What made them do that? I have no idea. Similarly, going to school sophomore year, we set up a software company. I realized immediately that the stereotype for Indians were backroom guys are going to write the code. I want to be exposed to business. Oberlin's Career Center said hey, have you thought about these different professions? That's when I ran into McKinsey. So I look at this as a series of opportunities that presented itself with decisions. And the other thing I found is people who had no need or necessity to help me came out of their way to do extraordinary acts of kindness.
Abhi Ingle:
The director of the United States Education Foundation in India. He saw me once. The head of the career center at Oberlin. He saw me once. He saw me once the head of the career center at Oberlin. He saw me once the first person at McKinsey who finally made the offer to me who need know anything about business, while everybody in that room interviewing I still remember to this day had Michael Porter's competitive strategy set out in front of them and I had never taken any business and they all laughed at me saying you haven't read this book, boy, that's going to be a tough interview. They saw something in me which was the problem solving, the desire, the passion, and for those people I'm always grateful and I like to pay that forward frankly. So if you look at what I do personally, I pay it forward.
Rajiv Parikh:
You definitely do it all the time and I'd say, from that experience right, you have this experience of how your family's encouraging, giving you the opportunity to take risks. There's a series of events that unfold where people are helping you, so you have this mindset that people are actually out there to help you and that's some of it too right, like you could take. You could be a person that's like. No people are looking to beat me up and you could always take a defensive crouch when they're suggesting to do things. You took it as a way of helping you. Is there any historical leader or technology or innovation that just got you that inspired you? I'm sure there's a dozen, so you have to pick one or two.
Abhi Ingle:
Yeah, I mean, look, I've been. I just say that I am profoundly grateful for having lived through the change that we saw with personal computers in my childhood to then the internet as I was graduating to the smartphone era, that I got to ride to what we're going through right now with SaaS, with generative AI, and all I can tell people is embrace that change, enjoy that change, harness that change and take joy in that change and help people adapt to that change, because to me that, frankly, is what defines a human being, that's what defines the world we live in, and I think we are constant pieces of work. Even when I sort of think of myself in old age and I think of myself and I might not actually have an operating career anymore, I like to learn.
Rajiv Parikh:
Yeah, it's super fun to learn right. It's always something new to get to go and drive forward and to push yourself towards.
Abhi Ingle:
The other thing is mindset Rajiv right. So I have a very optimistic perspective.
Rajiv Parikh:
So let me just say so you have a very optimistic perspective. Otherwise you wouldn't see these as openings, right? So now a number of people who listen to our podcast Spark of Ages are based in India. What advice would you give them about their career next? A lot of them may want to come to the US, but now India's booming on its own, so many of those top-notch folks may not need to come to the US. Right, india's changed fundamentally. India opened up in 1990. It went from a semi-socialistic state or heavily government regulated state to a much more open country for innovation and entrepreneurship. How would you advise them today?
Abhi Ingle:
For me have a vision for what you want to do, but keep your plans flexible. I'll come back to where I started off. I think India right now, specifically, is in the middle of a multi-generational renaissance that has kicked off. I I think India right now, specifically, is in the middle of a multi-generational renaissance that has kicked off. I'll tell you my own story. I'm now angel invested in two companies in India. This is not just because I want to do good and go back and help people, but because I believe the options are so profound and the people I'm meeting, the talent I'm seeing, frankly, in your own company position squared, is second to none. And the beauty is you can do it now, being where you are, without having to rip yourself out of your culture, and you can achieve success in your own terms, in your own country, as part of your culture.
Abhi Ingle:
Now I encourage all of you to experiment. If part of your change is to go overseas, it doesn't need to be the US. It could be Germany, it could be France, it could be France, it could be anywhere. Do it, try it. That experience, regardless whether it succeeds immediately or not, is going to change you for life, and that is a portion of who you are. All of that I've done. My journeys, my changes, my experiments, my failures are who make me who I am today, and I'm at peace with that. That's awesome.
Rajiv Parikh:
So now you've offered great advice to the youth of tomorrow, or even those who are listening today. They could be in their midlife and they can make change right. You've met some people at this event that made their life change at 50 or 55. You've had this amazing career. It's not done by any means. You've got a long way to go. Even if you think you've ended it, you're never going to stop. So if you were to put yourself in a parallel universe, right that you could do something completely different. It could be writing a book, it could be acting, it could be anything, not worrying about the path you're on. You're always willing to change, but you did build based on a certain path and your options get built based on that. How would you think about it? Would you actually do something completely different in that parallel universe? Is there something that says to you I got to try something that would have been cool to do?
Abhi Ingle:
You know, rajiv, it's a really interesting question to ask, because I believe there are multiple paths to happiness. There is not one path to happiness. Part of what people not know about me is I traveled a lot when I was young. I backpacked across Africa, southeast Asia, south America, obviously, europe. I've climbed Kilimanjaro, base Camp Everest, done the Inca Trail.
Rajiv Parikh:
At different ages, gone to the Alps at different ages. You didn't do this as just a teenager or a high school kid or college kid.
Abhi Ingle:
All the way through.
Rajiv Parikh:
You're doing this all the way through.
Abhi Ingle:
And when I travel I don't like to just stay in fancy places. I'm out.
Rajiv Parikh:
You went to Everest with your son.
Abhi Ingle:
Yes To Base Camp yes, with your 15-year-old son Correct, in which I was a bum with a backpack, just traveling around the world, taking in all these new experiences, learning from people, and maybe just be a tour guide. And yes, my net worth would probably be one hundredth of what it is right now, but you know what? The spiritual satisfaction I would get from that would be very similar. And fundamentally I look at so much of what you do is your mindset. I have a naturally optimistic mindset. My wife makes fun of me. You know her. She's a bit of a worrier and she literally gave me this T-shirt for my last birthday.
Abhi Ingle:
It said glass half full. Okay, and I like to think of this, as there is so much you can do. It's there is so much you can do. It's what makes you happy and as your life changes, right, one of the things I've been really reading is a lot of books by Arthur Brooks now and the theory of you know what I call fluid versus crystallizing what is happiness, and I'm finding that my own drivers are changing.
Abhi Ingle:
I get so much more fun just knowing that this accumulated wisdom I have 25 minutes with an entrepreneur starting off can change their life, or some with a mid-journey saying let me tell you all the things I did wrong so you don't make them or they're weighing off options and there's so much joy in that giving back and I also look at it as a way to honor all of those who helped me when they didn't need to, when I was nobody, and I look at that as paying back. Similarly, if you look at the access I got, a lot of my charitable giving goes back to literacy for kids in India literacy- for children in India.
Rajiv Parikh:
You can transform life.
Abhi Ingle:
That's right. My daughter went back and volunteered at an organization in India called Pratham and she served for two weeks in Aurangabad at the Pace Center, which, by the way, ironically, is only about 50, 60 miles from where my dad was born. So we go full cycle, so everybody keeps going with that Full cycle. I believe in the Indian concept of karma.
Rajiv Parikh:
Well, I would say in your wife's defense, since I know her and love her. Molly my wife does the same thing because she considers me overly optimistic. I think sometimes they take the half glass empty to balance us out.
Abhi Ingle:
Yes.
Rajiv Parikh:
Because I think they might have been optimistic.
Abhi Ingle:
That's empty to balance us out, because I think they might have been optimistic they might have been a little more had we not been so optimistic. They're wonderful balancing force. I'm glad you brought that up, because I will tell you that in every journey what matters is the people who you take along, and I would not be where I am without my parents, my grandparents and the people who helped me and, of course, my wife, who has had to endure me for almost 25 years of my life, and for that I'm deeply grateful. I couldn't do what I do without her. I couldn't be the carefree optimist if I wasn't knowing that she was worrying about everything else.
Rajiv Parikh:
One of the lucky things I got to do early in my career, post-business school, was because I knew you. I got to know Molly and Molly joined me as my head of corporate marketing when I was at Alta Vista and she's just a rock star and still is a rock star and I ended up hiring your brother-in-law. I think I got the better deal of the trade, although, although I think both did extremely well, both of them got an amazing experience and they would have done it anyways, but I think we we had a little part in it.
Rajiv Parikh:
I know you had a life motto from Albert Einstein earlier. Do you have a favorite life motto that comes back to you over and over, something that repeats in the back of your head all the time?
Abhi Ingle:
I want to embrace life for all that it has to offer, both now and in the future. I think I'm one of those people that you know, hopefully you know at some point, when you know you're no longer here, you say at some point, when you know you're no longer here, you say he did everything that he could get his hands on Strong legacy, but is there something that when you get up in the morning, two or three words that pop in your head. Make it happen. Go try it out.
Rajiv Parikh:
So you wake up in the morning and it's like I got to make shit happen.
Abhi Ingle:
I got to make shit happen. And if I'm even if I'm, this drives, drives my family crazy, but if you're on a vacation, I'm the guy who's like here are the seven things we're gonna get done today and we're gonna see all of these things to the point where we're in Thailand and, like my friends are like Abhi, we are wotted out, no more. But I learned to moderate. That too. I'm sure you learned chill out.
Rajiv Parikh:
And so now in the morning and when I'm on vacation, it's chill out, chill out, chill out. So yes, for me it's get up.
Abhi Ingle:
Get going.
Rajiv Parikh:
Get going baby. Okay, Awesome. Thank you so much, Abhi. I think in your career you've done so many interesting things and I see how it came from the amazing example of your parents, the boldness of your parents. They might have been physician, middle class folks, but there's a boldness in them that led them to enable you to try different things and because of their positive attitude. You might have been born with it, but I think you grew up with it and it enabled you to go really far and make a difference in the world, so I really appreciate it.
Abhi Ingle:
I love the depth of your thinking. Thank you for having me. It's just a 10x thing. Thank you for having me. I'm grateful for everybody who, at some point in their life, has taken a chance on me and I hope that I can pay that forward to people.
Rajiv Parikh:
Thank you. So, Abhi, we're sitting here in Park City Beautiful place. It's snowing outside. We're about to go skiing. You're in day three of the conference. You're actually going to be speaking later today to this illustrious group of 30 growth marketing leaders and GTM leaders, innovators. What are a couple takeaways that you have from the session so far and the conference so far? And the people?
Abhi Ingle:
So, rajiv, I'm really excited to be here. Thank you for having me here. As you probably picked up from me, learning is my thing and being a chance to be surrounded by 30 go-to-market leaders from whom I can learn. Take some of those learning backs to quad tricks and also share with them what we've done right at quad tricks and, frankly, some of Mishaps we've had along the way. That's how you get better. You exchange ideas openly and you create an amazing atmosphere out here. Okay, and the way, frankly, you've taken your own firm Position Squared and blended, you know, an Indian delivery team with a US delivery team. It doesn't feel like there's any any seam at all.
Abhi Ingle:
So yesterday, listening to Avanish talk about partnerships and ecosystem was invaluable. The guy who built it at Salesforce ServiceNow sits on the board of directors of HubSpot. Or then listening to Ankur talk about how you capitalize that in the Amazon marketplace which, by the way, Qualtrics is leveraging very well Crush it. I want to go back right now to Qualtrics and tell them about a few other things I learned from Ankur that I want us to be able to use. And then, pragmatically, listening to Neil talk about Cohere. We are also incorporating AI into all of our products and services, but listening to about what works versus not, that's true learning I can take back and I'm hoping, as I talk about Qualtrics, that some of the people out here are going to want to be able to buy Qualtrics products. So it's learning, it's commerce, it's helping each other out and having fun along the way. What could be better?
Rajiv Parikh:
Thank you for having me Nothing I can think of. It's a thrill to have you here.