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Samagra Development Associates

Is this your company?

Your Career and life will be screwed - Anonymous employee Samagra Development Associates Employee Review

1.0
4 May 2024
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

To be honest there is nothing good about working here

Cons

Please read this review if you are planning to join Samagra: I will try to list down the reasons why people would consider joining and what the reality is here, with utmost honesty. Many 5-star reviews here are from the company's recruitment department (you can gauge this by the one-line content, please do not believe them). 1. People come for a consulting role - Your role would nowhere be close to consulting. It would be a project manager role where you will chase government officials day in and day out without applying your own brain since everything flows here top-down. And you cannot argue with the leadership because they will ask you to leave if you do so. 2. People come here for making an impact - This is a typical organization that cares about extracting money from funding organizations and then creating a facade of impact. They know how to build a story and present it well; you can make that out from their website and social media content. I have personally worked on a lot of their projects on the ground, and there’s a huge difference between what they claim and what is actually delivered on the ground. So don’t join this firm thinking that you will make a positive impact on society; you will end up wasting the money of a funding organization that could have gone to some other place where actual impact would have happened. 3. People come here for a startup/small firm experience - This firm is like a tightly controlled regime and does not have a dynamic startup environment. You can draw comparisons to the North Korean regime where there is a dictator (the CEO), strict discipline(worse than school), you will be fired if you say anything against the leadership, and no freedom of speech. 50% of your actual time in this org will go into redundant processes. The CEO is not at all flexible, the company runs as per the wishes of one single person. Other factors to keep in mind: 1. Worst culture out of all the firms I have worked with - The CEO of the company openly says that you will have to give your life to this company if you want to work here. Whatever you say in this company in your 1:1’s with the manager would be used against you in appraisals. Leadership here is skilled in gaslighting and making you feel like you don’t know anything. 2. Your physical and mental health will suffer very badly - I have personally seen so many excellent people quitting without a job because they developed serious health issues while working here. The majority of the employees here are below 30 years of age, and that’s why the company exploits them to the fullest. 3. There’s no concept of work-life balance - You will be expected to work on weekends as well, sometimes they will call you to the work location also on weekends. During weekdays, there’s no end time. Meetings going till 10 pm is a norm. Some facts: - The average tenure per person here is 5-6 months (that’s why you will always see hiring posts on LinkedIn because the churn rate here is crazy). - Do not expect to get your bonus or variable pay on time. - Don’t expect a luxurious life; the company is under financial crisis, and you will be expected to stay in sharing rooms on district visits, and there’s no such thing as a daily allowance.

Explore other reviews about Samagra Development Associates

1.0
30 Nov 2018
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Opportunity of working with senior government officials Some motivated young colleagues

Cons

I knew Samagra very well both during initial stages and later stages (from when it was a smaller development concern, then through its merger with and de-merger from another company with whom relations had soured, and in its latest avatar as "transforming governance"), and so it pains me to write this review because I used to really believe in this company, and in its original founder. However, as I worked within the company I found two broad areas of great concern: - Behaviour: the behaviour of the company towards employees is very very poor. In addition to not having the right policies and biased treatment, there has been outright manipulation of both facts and individuals. The company is not transparent and does not promote transparency; on the contrary it manipulates statements from different employees; during my time there, I saw two of my colleagues break down and cry because of management; several times. Consequently, there is a huge mental heath issue for employees, which the management is entirely indifferent to. - Intent: this 'intent' can be further be subdivided into intent (external) for country/government and intent (internal) for employees. With respect to external intent, I have seen the company grey over facts (it's called 'storylining') to funders; when challenged, there was no admission of guilt or even a sense of an apology. By effectively misrepresenting the quality of government's own initiatives to international funders, the company does a huge disservice to the nation, just to make a space for itself. After all, if the government can do good work without such agencies, then this agency will not make money itself. Further I began to wonder that the intent is not genuinely to have "impact at scale", but to show impact (real or imaginary) to stay in the marketplace. Similarly, with respect to intent for employees; the management is very manipulative and deceitful; the same issue of unfair treatment, unfair promotion, unfair work hours, unfair compensation etc etc keeps cropping up; the management, however, will pretend each time that it is unaware of these issues and not deal with it; this is why people keep leaving and these people keep trying to hire, but they will never solve this problem, because they genuinely don't intend to. They will exploit individuals and throw them by the wayside. The intent factor is most troubling and hurtful because if people can behave badly without intending to, but when the company has no genuine intention of behaving well, it never actually will do so, but it will only pretend that it cares. But it doesn't.

51
5.0
10 Jun 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Good learning opp present here

Cons

Work life balance tough to achieve

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