About Chargebee

Today, Chargebee is a global leader in subscription billing and revenue management, trusted by over 6,500 businesses in 53 countries, including brands like Freshworks and Calendly. Backed by investors like Tiger Global and Insight Partners, Chargebee has raised over $470 million in funding and was last valued at $3.5B.

Back in January 2018, Chargebee was a Chennai-based Series B startup with 150 employees. And it had a hiring problem.

Problem statement

As Chargebee was scaling, its founders were finding it challenging to be involved in the early interview rounds themselves. But that meant applicants were less motivated to complete the interview process, which was pretty intense. Was there a way to compensate for this dip in motivation? There was also a need to focus specifically on attracting:

• more engineering talent

• more qualified applicants for customer support (it was more than a regular call centre job)

• more women employees

Additionally, perceptions of Chennai seemed to be a problem when attracting talent from other parts of the country. Could Chargebee do anything about it?

What we did

Amrit, founder of Story99 (who was a freelance filmmaker during this assignment), interviewed founders and employees and put together five videos, each addressing a specific problem.

Video 1 - the overall Chargebee working culture

The idea was to channel the founders’ passion and clarity to signal the kind of tribe applicants would get to join if they got through. It’s been seven years since we made this video, but it still works for Chargebee.

Video 2 - Chargebee from an engineering POV

This was created to speak specifically to engineering talent.

Video 3 - Customer Support focus

Video 4 - Women’s perspective on working at Chargebee

Chennai Beyond Stereotypes

A video may not change perceptions. But here is what happened: the video below got over 2 lakh organic views within a year, along with massive engagement. You should check out the comments section. We strategically decided to publish it on Amrit’s personal channel as a collaboration with Chargebee, and that seems to have helped.

Outcome

Chargebee has grown into a unicorn, expanding from ~150 people in 2018 to 1K+ today, with offices across the globe. These videos still work and are part of the career section of the website.

Over the years, we have helped several tech startups tell stories about what it’s like to work there and their founders’ vision, helping them attract and retain talent.

• HyperVerge - it’s a digital onboarding tech company

• Jodo - fintech  

• Turno - a company enabling the transition to EVs

• BeeHyv - IT services

If your team has grown to over 50 people and you have started to face hiring challenges, let’s speak to see what the right story-led solution could be for you. Because great storytelling is good business.