Trust, comfort & problem-solving: Pepperfry boss takes trekking lessons to boardroom

What once started out as research for Pepperfry’s Ambareesh Murty is now an annual high-altitude bonding exercise for the entire senior management team.

“In September 2015, I was researching places in India with low population density and thought it would be interesting to visit Zanskar Valley in Ladakh. So Ashish [Shah], my cofounder, one of our colleagues and I decided to drive to Leh and trek from there. That’s how we got hooked,” recalls Murty over a phone call. Since that initial trip, the group (now 12 people) has also done the Chadar trek, the Hampta Pass, the Wari La pass and Zanskar a second time.

Mountain to boardroom

“A lot of the rules that work for organisations work when you’re trekking,” Murty says. “It starts with the fact that you have to trust the people you’re going with. You have to be comfortable with them; you have to be able to solve problems together.”

Asked if their board is apprehensive about the entire senior management team going out together, Murty brushes it away. “We are careful. All the work that the senior team does gets delegated to their seconds-in-command. We only go with great trek operators with local knowledge. We get ourselves physically fit prior to treks. We get medical check-ups done.”

Pushing the limits
The team often climbed the equivalent of a gruelling 200-300 floors a day, only to return to base camp exhausted and set up camp for the night. “You share a very small tent with at least one person, if not two,” Murty says. “You climb seven hours but your day is not over. You have to set up your tent, your sleeping bags, etc. In the morning when you get up and it’s freezing outside, just the task of putting your sleeping bag back into the pouch (at 3,500 metres) is as good as running around Priyadarshini Park three times.”

But Murty enjoys the mental aspect of trekking.

“I’m a fairly chubby 40-year-old. I don’t have a six-pack. But trekking is mental,” he says. “I’ve seen people who you would have never thought could trek — they’re overweight or too old or something — but it’s just their mental strength and how they display it that comes out in a trek.”

Pack Lightly
One of the important organisational virtues Murty mastered on a trek was the art of packing his bag, right down to the number of sunscreen bottles. “Should you carry one bottle or two? Deciding what to carry is the biggest task of prioritisation you will do,” he says. “You might think on a five-day trek, I might bathe once and therefore carry extra clothes. But you never bathe on a five-day trek, so why carry extra clothes?”

However, one item always makes it to his trekking bag — his laptop. In an earlier interview, he confessed to sitting with it in the evenings, pondering over Excel sheets and problems he wouldn’t have had the time for at work. You can take a man out of the office and all that.