The Secret Behind Chillibreeze's COVID-19 Preparedness

COVID – 19 hit us out of the blue, as it did each one of the companies across verticals, around the world. Two months down the road Chillibreeze finds itself in a relatively strong position. Fingers crossed.

How come? What did we do right? I spent a couple of days pondering, asking questions, reviewing all that we had done. Here is what I found. Sharing with you my musings.

Ask any Chillibreeze Associate: “What makes your service different?”

The answer will be:

1. Speedy Service
2. Sincere Care
3. Radical Reliability

Our Location Adds to Our Challenge

Serving Fortune 500 companies located around the world is what constantly challenges us. Because our company was purposefully started in a remote city in India with high unemployment, the difficulties increase. Shillong rests in the East Khasi Hills district of the little-known Indian state of Meghalaya. In November 2019 Chillibreeze opened a branch office in the city of Aizawl, the capital of Mizoram, yet another state in the remote Northeast part of India. Aizwal is a city which is even more unknown to the world. (It is another matter that the talent in this state is to be seen to be believed. Well educated, smart and sincere folks)

So How Did a Company in Remote India Become So Prepared?

Our ‘preparations’ began in October 2019 when India faced a crisis caused by the Citizen Amendment Bill (CAB), which has since then become an ACT. (We did not know then that what we did then would prepare us for something much bigger.) The first curfew started in the month of November 2019 when two of our key leaders, Demander Hujon and Pynshai Lanong were setting up Chillibreeze’s branch office in Aizawl, Mizoram. These two leaders along with Teddy Kharpuri, our General Manager of facilities was able to keep our 100 plus staff working from home from two external locations.

Celebrating the hard work of Pynshai and Demander in a February Chillibreeze meeting. They didn’t know what was to come.

In a moment’s notice we flew 17 of our Chillibreeze staff to work from:

• Our newly rented office in Aizwal, Mizoram
• Rented space in the Software Technology Park Kolkatta.?

During the CAB crisis, and the government-imposed curfews, this amazing team outfitted a new office in Aizawl so we could successfully serve our customers.

A view from Aizawl Chillibreeze office

Another Timely Decision That Increased Preparedness

To ensure no breakages in connectivity, which is the lifeline of all that we do, our offices are outfitted with multiple internet service providers, multiple uninterrupted power back-ups through batteries, as well as state of the art industrial size diesel generators. Before the city-wide Shillong curfews were imposed (around CAB), the company already had in place a contingency plan. Each year we revisit our contingency plan for natural disasters like earthquakes. We constantly upgrade our team and re-assess how we can improve. We have an emergency plan under the control of a designated team, with details of the responsibilities of each member.

As we saw the tension increase with the Citizen Amendment Act in place, the team revisited our contingency plan in December 2019. That’s when they started to take action for working from home.

These are some of the actions that took place:

• November & December 2019 – Set up of the Aizawl Chillibreeze Branch office was expedited. Recruiting and training of additional staff in Aizawl.
• December 26th - With only a small percentage of staff using home wifi, we initiated the purchase of dual internet connections for staff working from home.
• December 26th – Purchased 56 Uninterrupted Power Supply for home use.
• December 27th – Purchased 60+ routers for home use.
• December 29th – 42 large screen monitors were purchased for home use.
• January 2020 – The team updated the contingency plan to prepare for possible future curfews.

A New Crisis Emerges

We wake up to the fact that the Coronavirus is global, and it has already appeared in India. On March 6th and 7th 2020, despite less stock in the market for hand sanitizers, our team searched local pharmacies for 2 days to finally procure a large batch for the company.

During the week starting March 16th 2020, we pay attention to the news and have 35% of our staff do a practice work-from-home week. The team experienced some glitches due to the hilly terrain and poor internet options in our city. Solutions were found. On Saturday, March 21st 2020 the Admin and our Business Technology Services (BTS) team worked tirelessly to arrange work stations across 4 building locations to ensure that everyone is safe and keeping social distancing.

Chillibreeze: Before Practicing Distancing

Chillibreeze: After Practicing Distancing

Monday morning of the 23rd of March all transitions were a success and we all start work as per the new arrangement (some from home, others from the office but keeping a distance), without a glitch. Remember in all this we did not know that something major was to happen the very next day. Our team was starting to implement a contingency plan, that is all.

8 PM, March 24th 2020 Prime Minister Modi Announces a 21 Day Lockdown

Our amazing administrative support team and the BTS team and the entire Chillibreeze staff immediately cooperate to set up home offices for our 100+ staff.

·????????44 internet connections were purchased

·????????Another 44 duplicate ISP packages purchased to ensure connectivity

·????????25+ comfortable office chairs delivered

·????????6+ desks delivered

·????????Inverters, UPS systems, batteries, and routers installed in 55 homes and staff trained on how to use these new devices to ensure electricity which goes off for hours at a time daily in our city of Shillong.

Demander, Pynshai, and their teams frantically work non-stop to keep Chillibreeze running by installing internet connections and UPS systems in over 50 homes.

I applaud every single leader in our company, especially Demander, Pynshai, and Teddy. These three men and their team have been working non-stop to not only ensure Chillibreeze keeps serving our customers, the team also took care of 30+ people involved with two ventures under Chillibreeze:

Zizira: Nutrient rich food from the pristine hills of Meghalaya

Muezart: Making Eri silk from Meghalaya known to the makers of the world

Teddy, our leader at the helm of our plan

It takes a team that has discipline in having a contingency plan and rolling it out to systematically execute... that says a lot.

Teddy serving and inspiring the team

World Class Technology Has Never Been More Appreciated

Wednesday, March 25th 2020, while India came to a STAND STILL, Chillibreeze kept working. Yes, everyone was working from home. It was an amazing experience. With 100 plus families seeing the intensity of a company executing a plan so that we could continue to serve our customers across the globe. Parents and spouses applauded the team. We celebrated one another.

Here’s the Secret Sauce that Keeps Us Going

Besides being a purpose driven company with strong ethical values that uphold confidentiality and security we subscribe to some of the best secure cloud technologies in the world:

• In order to make sure that our employees are working securely from home or other Company locations, Chillibreeze has implemented Microsoft Enterprise Mobility + Security which enables us to manage who has access to corporate resources, while protecting and securing business and customer information on all devices, anywhere, in real-time.
• Chillibreeze has implemented Office 365 Advanced Threat protection tool to protect against sophisticated threats such as phishing and zero-day malware and automatically investigate and remediate any suspicious attacks.
• Microsoft SharePoint is used for file storage which enables Chillibreeze staff to securely access files remotely.
• Microsoft Dynamics 365 is not only our CRM, but is the platform we use to schedule the hundreds of work request that come in each day.
• Microsoft Teams is one of the primary collaboration tools that we are using. Through Microsoft Teams the staff can perform chat, audio/video call, share files, host online audio/video meetings etc., securely with their own teams and customers as well.

April 5th, 2020 – A Sunday Snapshot

We are 12 days into the 21 Day All India Lockdown. Like everyone else in the world, we don’t know our future. We do know that we had one of the busiest billing weeks of the month. Working from home has allowed our staff to be more available to our customers than before. Connections and stories are being shared. We are grateful that we can work. Our customers are thankful that we prepared! The work continues to pour in.

Our leaders worked desperately with their teams to take care of our staff and our customers. Thank you for your diligent hard work. You are the reason our Overnight PowerPoint Presentation deliverables keep flowing.