Srikant Chellappa is a man of many talents. He’s CEO of a technology startup, owner of a Maplewood music studio and has even produced feature-length films.
Chellappa is co-founder, president and CEO of Engagedly. Founded in 2015, Engagedly provides software to help companies analyze and understand workforce performance, train and develop talent, and interact with and reward employees. The company has grown rapidly since its launch, earning a spot on the 2022 Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing private companies. Engagedly aims to help employees feel more connected with their work, sparked by Chellappa's recognition of a pattern of disengagement among employees while working at a major consulting firm.
“One thing I noticed in all these big companies is people didn't feel really engaged in many places. People are there for a paycheck or looking forward to the weekend or their retirement or things like that,” Chellappa said. “Engagedly was born on the idea that we should have more engaged workforces, so people feel more fulfilled in their careers.”
Beyond technology, Chellappa, a native of India, is heavily involved in the arts. He is owner of Kalinga Productions Studio, a music recording studio at 7420 Manchester Road In Maplewood, and is a member of a rock band, Manchester Underground. Film is also a passion for Chellappa, who has written and directed films. Films he has produced include "Bad Grandmas," "Sleep with Me" and "Fatal Call."
When you moved to St. Louis, did you expect to be here long? I don't think I was thinking very long term. St. Louis was not necessarily a first choice. My first choice was to move to New York or to California, but I ended up here and I kind of liked it for a while. I still like it.
How did you end up becoming an entrepreneur? I always had an entrepreneurial mindset. Even when I was in college, I was making college T-shirts and hats and selling them to people in the college. When I came to the U.S., I was studying for a master's in biomedical engineering and I was on a path to a Ph.D program, but I decided I really wanted to be an entrepreneur, so I switched to a business degree. I was looking for opportunities to do my own tech startup for years, and eventually I landed with a really small startup, Emids, out of Nashville in 2007. It was a tech consulting startup. I did that for nine years and I was the second in command on that company.
How are things going with Engagedly? We are still growing. However, I think the growth has slowed down a little bit, and I think it's a part of the market. I do feel that the growth will come back to the levels we were seeing a couple of years ago. Going forward, I think our goal really is to stay focused on the customers. The word I use a lot internally to my organization is being "customer obsessed." If you're customer obsessed, I think you will succeed. I use the phrase that you have to love your customers and you’ve got to figure out what will make you successful. It's OK to say no to things that a customer asks for occasionally if it doesn't make any sense, but you can't just ignore it. I think customer obsession is a core criteria in our dictionary on how we operate.
Why did you buy Kalinga Productions? I have always been interested in the creative arts. I’ve been a big fan of movies and music and really more anything creative in nature in that sense. I started making films in 2003 and over the course of the years, I've made several films as a writer, producer, director — seven films actually. After my startup exit, I came into some cash and there was an opportunity to buy out a music recording studio in St. Louis. And I ended up doing that in 2020, the middle of the pandemic, and it worked out really well because it was a music studio on one floor and the second floor serves as the Engagedly headquarters.
How is owning the music studio going? The studio's going very well right now. I pivoted to supporting a lot of independent musicians from what the studio was doing before we bought it. Before, it was a lot of commercial work and corporate work. I didn't want to necessarily do that as much or focus my energy on that. I wanted to focus my energy on promoting independent artists and I think that's going really well. That's the less-paying business essentially, but I feel like it's more fulfilling in the long run and probably going to make an impact in the local music community.
When it comes to making feature-length films, how have you balanced that with your day-to-day job? I just worked really hard, long hours and long days. There were times that I probably didn't take a weekend off. I was just doing something. It was either working or I was working on my movie on the weekends. I didn't really have any concept of a relaxing weekend per se, for years when I was doing that. For feature films, I basically would write in the mornings. I had a routine of getting up at 5 a.m. and writing. I would accumulate all my vacation and take a month off and make and shoot the film.
More about Srikant Chellappa
Age: 50
Title: President, CEO and co-founder of Engagedly; owner of Kalinga Productions Studio
Education: Has a bachelor’s degree in instrumentation and control systems from Delhi University and a MBA from the University of Memphis
Family: Chellappa has a daughter
Chellappa's historial heroes: Gandhi, Benjamin Franklin
