Expressing Gratitude To The Serendipitous Gift Of Cultivating Connections From Zoho!
Over the past couple of years, we have witnessed some beautiful things at KnowYourStar. Right from art geniuses volunteering to illustrate the entire Know Your Star role model story workbook series, to friends donating their entire annual bonus towards our student intervention program, the kind of support that has poured in from multiple directions in a million ways is tough to put into words.
But I wanted to share one such story that is very close to our hearts.
Connecting To You With Thursday Emails
Most of you have subscribed to our Thursday Emails, and since 2 years, we have not missed writing to you every Thursday! Initially when we started the ritual of Thursday Emails, our email list was a short one, and we were able to send these emails personally through our accounts. But as more and more of you started subscribing and our family started growing, we started getting blocked by our Indian email service provider, Zoho, because mail services don’t encourage mass emails.
So now we had an issue, and we didn’t know what to do. We were not in a position to afford availing any paid services, but we also didn’t want anything to disturb the weekly ritual that we had set up. That’s when I thought of something we believe in, “Ask and you shall receive!” I decided to write to the support at Zoho on a whim and tell them about the pickle we’re in, and if there was any way, any workaround that would allow us to continue our communication with our people without getting blocked. I also told them a little bit about the work that we do, and why this was so important.
To be honest, I had no hope of hearing back from writing to “customer care”! But I was so pleasantly surprised when my email was answered within 3 hours by the Regional Sales Manager of Zoho Corp, Mr. Anand Prakash. He not only responded to all my queries with clear explanations, but also told me about their newly launched “Zoho for Startups” initiative. To discuss it further he put me in touch with this wonderful woman and now a friend brought together by the universe – Kuppulakshmi Krishnamoorthy (Kuppu!)
Tying Roots With Zoho
Kuppu gave us such a warm, homely and happy introduction to the world of Zoho. We bonded over our love for the universe, serendipity and magic! The email exchanges between us and the Zoho team never made us feel like we were transacting with someone. It was very much human, which is mostly missing when you work with most big corporates, and which was what made us instantly connect with them and their services.
Kuppu told us everything we needed to know about “Zoho for startups”, and explained the bundle of apps we would have access to for free for one entire year! Our joy knew no bounds; not only were we getting access to Zoho Campaigns (which is the service we use to send our weekly storyletters/ Thursday Emails), but also so many other services to explore.
One year since this serendipitous occurrence, such beautiful ripples have stemmed out from our Thursday Emails, which we believe is also because our mails were rooted in the soil of this nurturing organisation of Zoho!
Ubuntu – We Are Because You All Are!
Soon one year was almost up, and our gift was about to expire. Our work never paused, but what remained same, was our financial condition, and our inability to afford the payment to retain the services. We were in double minds how to go about it. Would we be testing our luck by writing to them again? Was it fair? Would they agree? Why would they? Were we trying to benefit from the cultivated friendship?
The questions were many. But when your vision towards your goal is unwavering, when your actions are driven by selfless intentions and not selfish motives, nature has its ways of lighting one more candle at a distance on the dark path ahead, leading your way!
And that’s what happened. I wrote to Kuppu expressing gratitude, and telling her how much their services have helped us the entire year, and how we would love to continue, but have found ourselves at yet another crossroads. When I didn’t hear back from Kuppu for a while, we wondered what’s going to happen. After some days, I wrote back, and was flooded with gratitude, love and relief when I got a Whatsapp message, which said –
“A very good morning to you too, Pranita! 🙂Â
I had asked one of the team members to extend your subscription time immediately.
Forgive me for not having followed it through — I can’t tell you how sorry I am.
If you can bless me with just a couple of hours, I will make sure your account is alive again. 🙂 “
After a couple of hours…
“Sharanya from Zoho Campaigns tells me that the license time has already been extended till May of 2019 for KnowYourStar. :)”
It’s A Wonderful World!
From strangers volunteering to spend time in school with our students, to friends becoming constant supporters with their encouraging responses and suggestions, to making new heart connections through new subscribers, to our readers expressing their wait every Thursday to read our email in their inbox, we have been overwhelmed with our Thursday Emails, which wouldn’t have been possible without the support from Zoho! 🙂
Apart from how it’s helped our work, I cannot but emphasise on the friendship we have been able to cultivate with Kuppu. Getting to learn more about this phenomenal woman has been a thing of immense joy and inspiration, for me personally, and I can see a long road with many candles ahead. 🙂
“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”Â
Enjoyed reading about this? Then you might like to read Reflecting On The Eventful, Impactful, Celebratory 30 Days That Passed By!
If there’s a story that needs to be told, we are ready to tell it. Write to us at contact@knowyourstar.com with your story lead, or contact us on Facebook or Twitter.
