Lalit Keshre's lockdown schedule includes 11-hour workshift, followed by family time, board games

The Groww boss shares his work, exercise and leisure schedule during the lockdown.

By Maleeva Rebello, ET Bureau | Apr 20, 2020, 05.31 PM IST

Lalit Keshre, Co-Founder and CEO, Groww, is very comfortable with working from home. The company started preparing the entire organisation for WFH (work from home) scenario much before the lockdown was announced.

The online mutual funds investment company boss told ET Panache, "I am trying to follow the same routine that I followed before this happened. So pretending to go to the office at usual times, and coming back home in the evening. I have a separate workplace and that helps to maintain the boundaries of office work and personal work."

Keshre has started using Google Calendar extensively to manage collaboration between the teams. "Another tool we use a lot is Slack. We have been using Slack for the last three plus years, and the usage has only increased because of the current crisis," he shared.

A challenge of team engagement that happens naturally when you work in an office, was tackled by the Groww team by doing a lot of activities online. "We were writing internal blogs, conducting quizzes, etc. These activities keep people connected to each other, without any context of work," Keshre said.

The Groww boss wakes up early, around 6 am and does some exercise or meditation. "I am addicted to reading a newspaper along with breakfast. Then I get ready and get into office mode in my home office by 8 am. I go through my regular schedule till 7 pm. I block 7 pm to 8:30 pm for family time and avoid taking any calls or checking emails, although I fail to resist the temptation to pick up my phone. Post that I keep it very flexible and tilt toward personal or professional time depending on the situation," he shared.

Keshre tries to exercise 2-3 times a week. "The biggest challenge I face is keeping the discipline to exercise and actually look for tips from others on how to solve this," he said.

Being locked at home, there is a lot more time in hand for the Groww boss. "I have started playing board games a lot more these days with family. We were lucky to stock up with a lot of them before the lockdown. Catan, Ticket to Ride, Scrabble, Sequence, etc are some of our favourites," he ended.

Tired Of Never-Ending Working From Home Shift? 4 Tips To Maintain A Work-Life Balance

1/6

Working from home has become the new normal as companies try to minimise disruptions and keep operations running as close to normal as possible. But with most of us working from home, the lines between "work" and "home" could become quickly blurred.

A few weeks ago, Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma took to Twitter to announce that he had been so wrapped up in Zoom meetings (inset from Sharma's Twitter account) that he forgot it was Sunday. And that seems to be the case with most entrepreneurs who are dealing with investor pressure and the stress of a looming economic slowdown.