Puneet Sabharwal joined Clay, a GTM data enrichment product that helps GTM teams grow revenue faster, as a product designer and became its Head of Brand in 2023. “There were 20 employees when I joined,” he said. “As with most startups, I got to wear a lot of hats. I saw all the gaps we needed to fill and tried to help wherever I could be most useful.” 

That meant taking on HR tasks—like onboarding, managing benefits, and improving the employee experience—for the first time in his career. Before long, he was in charge of the entire people team. “I entered it with a bit of nervousness,” Puneet said. “I was coming from being a product designer to owning a function that I didn’t know a lot about.”

As the new Head of People and Brand, Puneet had to lead two departments and help Clay meet ambitious growth plans, which was only possible if the company hired both quickly and thoughtfully. It was a tall task for someone new to HR.

Clay scaled fivefold with the help of Rippling PEO, which gave Puneet the support he needed to lead the people team with confidence, even without prior HR experience.

“I don’t think going from 20 to 100 employees would’ve been possible without a well integrated tool running so many different things for us,” Puneet said. “Not just payroll, but also compliance, onboarding, and benefits. I attribute most of the speed and help scaling our team to Rippling.”

I don’t think going from 20 to 100 employees would’ve been possible without a well integrated tool running so many different things for us… I attribute most of the speed and help scaling our team to Rippling.

Puneet Sabharwal

Head of People and Brand at Clay

When Puneet took over onboarding, he wanted to speed up the process while refining it to better set new hires up for day one success. “It’s such an important thing to make people feel awesome when they come in and try to remove the tension they might feel from leaving their jobs and joining a new place,” he said.

Instead of the old days of manually sending out offer letter PDFs to every new hire, Rippling now distributes compliant forms, with information tailored to each individual employee, automatically. 

As soon as new employees sign the offer letters, Puneet designed workflows to automatically remind their lawyers to issue equity. And new team members automatically get access to needed company resources—like gifting structures and employee handbooks—ahead of their first day. “Workflows are an amazing tool,” he said. “You can connect everything to a start date and take it from there.”

Clay also uses Rippling’s vast reporting features to better understand its workforce. Puneet has reports set up for employee start dates, work anniversaries, demographics breakdowns, and compensation data to help with benchmarking.

“It helps to have a more global view of what’s happening, especially as we scale,” Puneet said. “Having standardized data feels like the best way to support our employees and check in on the health of the company.”

New to HR, Puneet faced a steep learning curve when he took over Clay’s people function. “I had to reveal a lot about my insecurity coming into this role and never having done anything like this,” he said. But his two Rippling account managers were with him every step of the way, teaching him how to configure different workflows and make the most of the product. He also leverages a deep well of video tutorials and how-to guides that teach him how to use different modules. 

“We’ve gotten all the support we need. Even if I'm not around and the team has to get some help, the chat feature works really well and promptly answers all our questions,” Puneet said. “Rippling has been a great partner for us.”

• Streamlined onboarding: Clay automated 80% of its onboarding tasks, which saved time and made sure new hires got support they needed ahead of their first day. 
• Rapid growth: Clay grew from 20 employees to 100 over the past 18 months. “It wouldn’t have been sustainable without Rippling workflows,” Puneet said. 
• Time saved: By offloading payroll, benefits, and compliance to Rippling PEO, Puneet can focus on strategic initiatives and lead Clay’s brand and people teams simultaneously.