A quick look around our careers website gives it away: we’re all about innovation here. While all teams at Klook keep an agile mindset and try out new solutions, there is one team at Klook for which innovation is part of the job description.
We sat down with Aishwarya Bhaskar, Head of Supply Innovation, to talk about her role, the kind of projects the team works on and some real advice on how to stay agile.
Let’s start from the beginning. What does the Supply Innovation team do?
Supply Innovation focuses on two areas. One is internal process optimization. We work with Sales & Business Development teams at Klook to optimize things from lead generation and account management to forecasting and reporting.
The other area is on merchant support through every stage of their journey with Klook: from the first contact to how they grow with us after onboarding. We emphasize a lot on automation and we ensure seamless integration with the Klook platform. On the content and education side, we share knowledge and data insights that we’ve collected.
What were some of the biggest projects you launched this year?
We had a successful launch of Klook Academy and Klook Partners Hub this year.
Klook Partners Hub is a one-stop-shop for merchants to get any information they need. It started off as a portal to get updates on the COVID-19 situation, such as access to resources from different governments. We later expanded it by adding the Klook Academy, which are webinars with travel industry experts on topics that are most pressing for the merchants at the moment. These webinars have been hugely successful so we are scaling up, planning more webinars in the coming months.
Now it’s about seeing how we can increase the engagement with our merchants through that platform and add more training and educational content to help boost their self-learning capabilities. This year, Learning & Development is especially important for everyone in the travel industry so I hope the resources will be useful for our partners.
Can you tell us about your role as Head of Supply Innovation?
Supply Innovation is a pretty big team working across several countries and we have tons of projects. My role is to allocate resources to the most urgent projects with the highest impact and remove bottlenecks for my team. I also look out for new ideas and areas where we can help our merchants.
What was your career journey prior to joining Klook?
My current role at Klook is an amalgamation of my previous experiences. I have a strong background in sales. Right after business school, I did two years of sales at a large telecom company. That laid the foundation for my growth, as I can now relate better to what’s happening on the ground.
After that, I worked in marketing a global e-commerce company and then led partnerships at a “unicorn” startup in the hospitality space. I jumped at the opportunity to join Klook as it allows me to combine my experience in strategy and operations with my passion for travel!
How do you find working at Klook?
I’ve been at Klook for a year. It’s been crazy, hectic, but I love it! I like the energy levels and people are so collaborative and receptive to new ideas.
What is your main learning from this year so far?
One of my main takeaways is to stay agile. There’s no point holding on to something that may have worked well last year because the situation this year is just so different. Being able to think on your feet and come up with new solutions is critical.
A good example of this is how Klook pivoted very quickly and started selling home-based experiences. During difficult times, it’s important to think outside the box and openly share ideas and resources.
For those who struggle with being agile, do you have any tips on how to adopt that mindset?
Being agile is always difficult because it’s hard to let go of our ideas, projects or ways of working. However, we need to stay rational in our decision-making. I always tell my team: If it works, great! If it doesn’t, learn from your mistakes and move on. If it makes sense to course correct and do things differently, that’s the approach we should take.
Want to work in an innovative, fast-paced company like ours?
Posted by Klook Careers
