Leaving for the first day of my internship at Vivaa, I felt prepared. I was perfectly qualified for the job that I was about to start: interns make coffee, and my coffee was delicious! I’d charged my phone the night before, and packed my latest read in my bag— after all, what else was I going to do between coffee runs?

At 9:26am, I stood outside the office door. Suddenly I was nervous. I wanted to make a good impression. Entering at exactly the time I was told to arrive, and not a minute before, I concluded, would impress everyone (I’m still trying to understand the inner workings of my brain). So I waited. Three minutes and thirty six seconds later, I walked in and met my first Vivaa employee: Saloni. I later learned that my only successful attempt at punctuality (I run on Anoushka Standard Time, which runs 15 minutes slower than IST) was wasted on the wrong person— for Saloni, punctuality was as natural as breathing.

So welcome to my anecdotes as a Vivaa intern— better titled, “Anoushka, You Were Wrong About Everything.”

For as long as I can remember, I’d heard corporate culture horror stories, with its propagators telling skin-crawling tales of the common corporate monsters: “Count Toxic Hierarchy” and “Franken-AbuseTheInterns” (clearly lazy puns are my forte). Vivaa made these stories seem like urban legends.

Integrated in its core was a culture of support, encouragement, and learning. I never felt that I shouldn’t ask a “stupid” question in fear of being ridiculed. Intelligent or not, all my questions were answered by my coworkers with tact, detail, and interest— they seemed to have a genuine concern for my learning. I felt championed in all my endeavours. Even when I didn’t believe I could do it, the people around made me feel like I could. Though I was the subordinate to virtually everyone, I never felt patronised or less important.

A culture like this isn’t just created by plastering fun quote decals on walls like they do in kindergarten classrooms: “treat others the way you want to be treated!” It’s more than just saying that respect and support are mandated, and “this is a safe space”, it’s about showing it. A culture like this is fostered by practices that incite fraternity and collaboration.

I imagined, on my first day with no friends at work, sitting alone at a cubicle eating lunch, my only companion the sandwich in front of me (you could say I’m a little dramatic). But instead, I was all but pulled into the “community lunch conference room”. At Vivaa, it was ensured that there was designated time in the afternoon to unwind and bond.

More surprisingly, the open door policy wasn’t just a ostensibly implemented facade to give the impression of a collaborative-team-based organisation. In fact, I was a frequent flier to the founder’s office— just to do my work and listen to DJ Kruti’s musical selections. As it turned out, what she listened to was far more current than I!

But this culture of camaraderie didn’t reduce the respect I had for my coworkers, and more so my superiors. They just didn’t feel the need to pull superiority to get a job done, and for that I respected them more. Vivaa was not a fear-based system, it was a trust-based one. There seemed to be a mutual understanding between the leaders and their secondaries with its foundations in reciprocal respect, appreciation and support.

My internship at Vivaa showed me what it was like to work at a truly synergetic organisation that values its employees and shows them with more than just meaningless Diwali bonuses and boozy corporate retreats (not that I’m complaining about either!). At Vivaa I didn’t just have colleagues, I had friends, all of who worked with me to help me learn and grow, not just programmed me to become a corporate machine.

Now, I know you’re tired of the sappy, and don’t want to be left with a cliffhanger: did I ever go on a coffee run!? That’s one secret I’ll never tell. Guess you’ll have to experience the Vivaa culture for yourself!