Different people have different leadership styles. Sidharth Rao’s was leadership by love. He loved his work, he loved his team, he loved everybody around him. And he generally just spread love wherever and in whichever form. He was a unique human being. Everybody knows that he was a digital guru and very good with digital creatives and all of that. But still people who’ve interacted with him would know what a good human being and a person he was, always available at any point in time, if you ever needed anything. He sort of lived life on his own terms.
A few years ago, he wanted to give up and close Webchutney. And at that stage I had just taken over. I said that ‘look you got to give it a chance. You haven’t given it full justice, and there’s a lot more.’ I told him that you make us famous and I’ll make you rich. And I gave him a challenge saying that Webchutney should be as creative if not more creative than, you know, whichever the leading traditional creative agencies were like Ogilvy and McCann and so on.
And, boy, what a parting gift he’s left us.
He actually made India proud. He was an integral part of the management team.
Read More: Sidharth Rao: A digital maven who made creative entrepreneurship cool in India
Funny thing, amongst his many strengths, certainly punctuality wasn’t one of it. So whenever we had our exec meetings, he would typically be the last guy to come in. And so they would always leave the seat next to me vacant, because everybody will, you know, fill the other seats and Sidharth almost always ended up sitting right next to me. Which was a big joke about how he always manages to go and sit right next to me.
He just immersed himself. He was so genuine. All of us put on a different face when you’re talking to a client, a different face when you’re talking to your boss, a different face when you’re talking to your subordinates or peers etc. He was the same irrespective of whether it was a 1000-Crore client he’s talking to or a junior management trainee. Very few people in today’s world have that genuineness and he was an absolute gem, which is a big loss for the industry.
They say that the Void is always very difficult to fill. I think in Sidharth’s case, there is no void. He’s left so much of love behind that it automatically fills itself over there.
He was close not only to me, but to my family, to my wife, to my son. I feel I’ve lost a family member.
He and I spoke just the day before he passed away. I was in Miami addressing a conference and coming to India on Sunday, and we had agreed to fix a meeting to meet on Monday or Tuesday. But I think that meeting will now have to wait. Wait for some time.
Sidharth’s legacy
As a great leader, he always gave the credit to others, but in reality he was a very, very important part of the driving force of Webchutney. Everybody knows that. But he was so self-deprecating almost in that sense. He’s so generous with his credit to the team and to everybody else, but not with himself. It is the opposite of what most people try to do in today’s world, which is to grab credit. He was reluctant even in 2019 in Cannes. Webchutney had won and I said “what sort of way have you dressed up?” “We’ll go in and pick up such a big award and you’ll be all over the place.” He said, “I’m like this only. But I won’t go to collect the award, I’ll send the kids (team).”
As the award was happening, he and I were sitting in a bar somehere.
That is what Sidharth was. He lived life king size. And he lived it his way from the beginning right to the end.
I was in love with him. I was absolutely in love with him. He’d given up and he wanted to pack up and he was really frustrated. All of us go through these phases in our career. I challenged him and I told him that look, your race is only against yourself. Nobody else. You forget about anything else, you have to race against yourself. And boy did he win that race every year. It was unimaginable, even I couldn’t have dreamt of winning so many awards and Agency of the Year and many Grand Prix at Cannes Lions.
Even when you put in your most ambitious planning, you wouldn’t even dream of a scenario like that. He made it, he did it and he delivered it.