Meet the Tribe: Shubha Pallavi
Entering new markets as a start-up is often challenging and a bit scary, but also super exciting. Enter Shubha – who ensures super smooth sailing in these endeavours within Tibber. Shubha is an excellent cook of Indian food, loves to bake but hates following the recipes and has a passion for mixing cocktails (which she claims are pretty bad though). She is an overall lovely person and her most adorable little dog, Adele vom Wapelstern, has stolen the hearts of our Berlin-Tibberinos. We threw a bunch of questions at Shubha so you could get to know her a little better.
'Meet the Tribe' is a series of articles where we get to know the faces behind the app, analytics, user experience, sustainability, PR, support and engineering at Tibber.
Name: Shubha Pallavi
Works with: Product
Office location: Berlin
Comes from: New Delhi, India
Dream job as a child: My grandfather retired as the chief electrical engineer of the national hydroelectric power corporation, hence I knew at a young age that I would also be an electrical engineer in the renewable energy field.
Weirdest hobby: Listening to (borderline gruesome) true crime podcasts while gardening.
First of all, what gives you energy in life?
A good challenge that I can be obsessed with.
What did you do before joining Tibber?
I worked as a project engineer with the government of India within the power ministry, to execute some of the largest demand side energy management/energy efficiency initiatives in the country, ranging from installation of LED street and home lighting to aggregation of EV demand and carrying out large procurements. After 5 years of working, I travelled to Berlin in 2017 to pursue my business degree in energy management, after which I learned about Tibber. Needless to say, I was immediately intrigued by the business model and vision of Tibber, and eventually found my way into the team. 🙂
Since you've worked in the energy market before, what do you think makes Tibber special?
Tibber is a game changer for people who want to be in charge of their own electricity, be it with smarter charging of EVs, optimised solutions for PV, smarter homes and very soon even more exciting products. Tibber makes it easier for anyone to be a climate hero: by not only providing green electricity at spot market prices (no hidden profits on kWh for Tibber) but also reducing the consumption of electricity as much as possible. After all, the greenest electricity is the one that was never used!
You work in the “House of Product”. What exactly does that mean?
Short answer:
I look at improving the product market fit in our current and future markets.
Long answer:
One of the most exciting parts of my daily tasks is to be able to bring Tibber to as many people as possible. This could include activities ranging from the suppliers’ license formalities in new countries to researching what tariff structures and subsidies exist in those geographies.
For our current markets, I find the insight which helps Tibber make a better product for each of our geographies. My aim is to be able to research in a way that improves the Tibber experience: which could mean completely different things to our customers depending on where they are.
How does a normal work day look like for you?
My tasks are almost equally divided into all things research and all things project management. I secretly like the latter more, but think I am slightly better at the former. 😁 I try to keep my first half of the day as free as possible because that is usually the most productive part of my day. Some Tibberinos (editor's note: that’s what Tibber employees like to call themself) aren’t a fan that I pull them in late afternoon meetings lol.
In her free time Shubha loves to draw and is a self trained madhubani artist, but puts her own twist to it.
What was the weirdest situation that ever happened at work?
I joined Tibber in the middle of the pandemic, which meant working remotely for a long time. Then came the time to actually come to the office and that first day I met my colleagues in person, I think it was very shocking for me to find out how tall everyone was (sure, people were also surprised to see I was short in person).
What is the most challenging part of your work?
The most challenging part of any research project is understanding where to start, and making sure it stays relevant and to the topic by the time I am done. It should be usable and bring value, and sometimes it's easy to lose track of objectives. The best part of being at Tibber though, is that I can bother anyone and pick their brain from time to time, and that usually improves my work a lot.
What do you like best about working at Tibber?
I am sure it has been said by a lot of Tibberinos, but we are at the forefront of bringing the energy transition to the people. Every day we do what is classified as “far in the future”, and that is the best part of being with Tibber.
What do you think is the future of the energy industry?
Very ambitiously speaking, in the future, most electricity will be renewable, decentralised and digitised to a large extent. A lot more exciting technologies like hydrogen, carbon capture, safer nuclear, peer to peer energy trade of locally produced green energy, smart grids and cities would be commonplace. Long term, of course dinosaurs (editor’s note: what we in Tibber like to call the traditional and very inflexible energy companies) would be a thing of the past. 😉
If you were to choose a movie character, who would you be?
Sen (Chihiro) from Spirited away.
Do you want to be a part of the Tibber Tribe? Check out our careers page for open positions ⚡️
