Four professionals have joined hands to start a venture which claims to be the country’s first start-up for “manufacturing happiness”.
The Happy Tribe, founded in early 2020 by Jamshedpur-based motivational speaker and entrepreneur Santosh Sharma and three others, claims to have benefited more than 1,000 professionals, entrepreneurs, industrialists and students.
“India being ranked 144 out of 149 countries in 2020 in the UN Happiness Index (ranked 139 in the 2021 UN Happiness Index) made us think that a country which has high per capita income is not in the top 10 in the happiness index. When the idea was taking shape, I was joined by Mumbai-based Amit Jha and Saurabhi and Jamshedpur-based Milan Joshi to form The Happy Tribe,” said Sharma.
Jha was heading the online initiative of Mahindra and Mahindra but resigned to join The Happy Tribe, while Saurabhi, who had worked for Infosys and Colgate, also quit the corporate world to increase “more smiles per person” and Joshi has served in Wipro.
“The 21st century has taught us that we may have a big bank balance, the best of cars, houses and everything but that may not guarantee happiness. The world is becoming a more and more unhappy place to stay. Hence, The Happy Tribe aspires to manufacture happiness. We believe happiness to be both a science and an art and the most sought-after experience and emotion people will look for in the 21st century,” said Sharma, who has been giving motivational lectures in business schools across the country.
“New-age consumers have seen manufacturing of steel, cement, chips but now they’ll see manufacturing of happiness. They will themselves become the manufacturer by being a smart well-being factory themselves. Consumers have seen delivery of material products like pizzas, web series, mobiles, clothing at their home. Delivery of happiness is now going to be done similarly but with a huge twist as the experience is going to enhance manifold at almost no cost when compared to the benefits. Our mission is to increase more smiles per person globally,” said Sharma.
“We are both a B2B (business to business) and B2C (business to consumer) organisation increasing the happiness quotient individually and in organisations with multi-pronged benefits,” Saurabhi said.
The Happy Tribe has in its research found that more than 80 per cent of unhappiness is self-created as one does not know how to receive, process and respond to situations. Because of this defective process, one exports unhappiness all around, the research found.
“Money has increasing returns to scale only till our basic needs are satisfied. Once this is achieved, money has a decreasing return to scale as far as happiness is concerned. All the highs and lows of life tend to meet the baseline of happiness of any individual, organisation or country for that matter,” added Saurabhi.
The Happy Tribe toolkit has natural and scientific tools that are mental, emotional, biological and psychological in nature.
“Many of us are not even aware of it (happiness), forget about using it effectively. And they come naturally with us. Professionals, youth, kids, sports persons and homemakers have already started manufacturing happiness and situations that used to put them off are being handled more happily. Depressive tendency and negative energy are now being used more effectively to create chhoti-chhoti khushiyan (small moments of happiness),” said Sharma.
“In the era of consumerism, we try to buy happiness like a movie ticket to beat boredom but these are short-lived. Also Internet and social media is adding to a lot of complications and superficial emotions which are making us unhappy,” said Sharma, who was invited to speak on The Happy Tribe at Symbiosis Institute of Business Management, Pune, and Arka Jain University, Jamshedpur.