It’s been over 20 years since the inception of Digité. Over all these years, many a moment during the day for many of our people would go thus –
“Hi there! My name is <xyz> and I am calling from Digitee…”
“Hullo! Is the name of your company Digit?”
“Hey Mahesh… thanks for joining the meeting! I am excited at the opportunity to speak with – ah – is it Digyte?”
Unfortunately, too many of our own employees as well as prospective employees, and of course customers or vendors make these mistakes. Many of them made us grind our teeth, often severely!
The kind that I DO enjoy went like this –
• “Hi – my name is Mahesh and I work for Digité.”
• “Oh, Digitech?”
• “No”, I respond – “Digité. Pronounced Di-gi-tay – like café. Ends with an e. With an accent.”
• “Ohh! It’s kind of French?!”
• “Yep, that’s it!”
• “Nice! How did you come up with it?”
• “Well, we started during the dot com boom, when we had an e-consulting company, and we were helping other organizations that wanted to become web-enabled. So, we came up with a consulting offering that we called “Digital Transformation of the Enterprise” – which gave us the acronym “Digité”!”
• “Wow! That’s a great story! You were kind of ahead of the current fad by like 20 years!”
• “Yep – that is us!”
Of course, the above IS all true – it is the REAL story behind how we got our name! And it is ironic that we “saw” a trend – Digital Transformation – that would truly catch on just about 20 years later. Of course, we could have exploited it better 🙂
Well… all that is finally changing now!
In early 2020, as the pandemic hit, and we all went into lockdown, AVS (AV Sridhar – my boss, co-founder and our CEO) made the decision that that was a good time to relook at ourselves, reimagine our vision and product portfolio, and completely rebrand ourselves.
By mid-2020, in the middle of the pandemic, we had started to see the lockdowns and the work-from-home situation starting to have an impact on people. Our own people. Our customers and users. Our friends and family. While the freedom to work from anywhere definitely has its pluses, the challenge of sitting at home alone, being on video/ web calls all day long, not being able to get up and talk to a colleague… all were taking their toll. Hardest was – and has been – onboarding new employees – who don’t get to meet their colleagues for a long time, or understand their team’s or company’s culture, rhythm and style by peering through a Zoom or Teams call.
It was clear to us that we had to do something that addressed the issues of remote and isolated people and teams. We zeroed in on our vision – “Humanize Work” – to help people feel part of their teams and organizations – and to give them a face and a voice.
We embarked on a journey that has led us to this day. Today – nearly 31 months, 1000s of cups of tea and coffee, and 100s of Google/ GTM Meetings, presentation decks, high-energy multi-time-zone, multi-city collaboration sessions later – we are THRILLED to announce our new family of products called Nimble – and a new company name – NimbleWork!
We believe Nimble and NimbleWork give expression to our belief that ALL teams and ALL enterprises must adopt Agile thinking and Agile ways of working to become what they need to in today’s VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) world – nimble!
Whether they are doing projects or regular work, organizations and teams must be nimble in planning, executing and tracking the work they do. And in doing so, they must put their people front and center.
(Of course, even as I write this, I realize how ironic – and hollow – it must feel to the 1000s of people who have recently lost their jobs.. As we have – yet again – witnessed a sea-change in the economic and business environment, it is clear once again that both companies and people need to be nimble, light-footed and agile – to respond to these changes, survive and thrive. And we are here to support them in doing just that!)
Stay tuned to get a more detailed story of our journey and our new products – and how we help you Humanize Work!
In the meantime, many of us, not the least my boss, are heaving an admittedly bittersweet sigh of relief – no one will be mispronouncing our company name for a long time to come!!
Farewell, Digité (di-gi-tay). Hello, NimbleWork!
