The past year and a half have been intense, and I don’t mean because of the pandemic. In the last eighteen months at Ultragenic, I have been a part of an amazing journey of professional and personal growth and discovery. And the best part is that we are just getting started!
50 is as important a milestone as any
In July this year, we had our 50th colleague join our team. It was a milestone that made us pause to reflect on the last eighteen months of Ultragenic. What started as a team of 5 just over a year ago, with an idea to synergize technology and PV domain expertise to fill a void in the industry, has already reached a size of 50. And this growth has been completely organic.
I have been fortunate to witness and build this from the start. Over the last year, we have added talent and resources to each of our functional verticals, from Product Development to Project Management, and from Consulting & Implementation to Validation. While these different verticals have been strengthened, the teams working on any project have been cross-functional. Let me explain.
The start-up environment has given us room to explore
We have a very lean organizational and functional hierarchy at Ultragenic. The leadership has ensured that every team member gets the maximum opportunity to explore and develop their skills. There is complete flexibility to move horizontally between the various functions, depending on the demands of a project and the skill sets/interests of team members. We have had team members who started their journey doing core development within Consulting and made a lateral shift to product engineering, some have moved from core consulting to project management. Each member, having a more holistic view of what the organization does and with a deeper understanding of the different aspects of any project, is better positioned to deliver on their own roles, knowing how it contributes to and impacts the other pieces. This has also ensured optimal utilization of resources, where additional talent has been hired based on the needs of a project and the organization’s future plans.
Our work culture is our biggest strength
We are a people company with a long-term mindset – both in terms of our internal resources, as well as the clients we work with. The culture, which has been established at Ultragenic, reflects this intent.
From the time a new resource is hired, we ensure that they have the best opportunity for success. Irrespective of their background and years of experience, they go through a rigorous training program to build on their technical skills, PV domain knowledge and soft-skills. This also helps them identify their own strengths, which they can explore further through the roles they take on in various projects and in the organization.
Communication and Celebrations are two important ‘C’s in our work culture. Despite the challenges of the last several months of the pandemic, we have ensured that the channels for team interactions have stayed open. They may have moved from offline to online but we have stayed engaged and connected throughout this time. We also love to celebrate every achievement – big and small, and recognize every contribution – team and individual.
On a personal level, it has been a specially enriching journey for me. Moving from a large organization set-up to a start-up environment, I have had amazing opportunities to explore different aspects of the business functions as well as the solution verticals. It has been a steep learning curve with lots of hard work and it has been thoroughly enjoyable. It has also added a lot of value to my personal life.
We are just getting started!
When I reflect on the last eighteen months, I feel extremely proud of what we have been able to achieve as an organization. Having defined our three key focus areas of Consulting, Product Development and PV cloud services, we have added amazing talent to ensure we deliver superior results in all three.
Our product teams have already delivered several impactful tools for the PV industry, be it our Data Migration Automation tool or our Intake tool or the Argus Automated AWS platform, with several more accelerators currently under development.
As we celebrate crossing the milestone of 50 team members, we are excited about the times ahead because when we add team members at Ultragenic, we don’t just add capabilities, we increase them exponentially!
