Startup founder’s gesture surprises Chase employee

Hetal Retail, an early-stage software developer based in New York City, has an unusual connection to the Hoosier state—its name was selected in part to honor the Indianapolis bank employee who helped the company get off the ground.

That person is Hetal Jogi, a 26-year employee of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. in Indianapolis. (Her first name rhymes with “metal.”) As a client service senior associate, Jogi works with a team that serves small to medium-size businesses in New York City.

One of her clients is David Roger, a New York City entrepreneur who met Jogi when he was CEO at Felix Gray, an eyewear company he co-founded in 2016. Felix Gray was a Chase customer, and Jogi was a member of the banking team that served that company.

“We bonded very well from the get-go,” Jogi said of Roger. “He’s a very cool guy.”

Jogi helped the company with everything from wire transfers to setting up accounts to applying for federal COVID-relief programs during the pandemic. “Just everything under the sun, to be honest,” Roger said. “It’s just a pleasure to work with her.”

Roger characterized Jogi as reliable and always ready to help. “I can call Hetal, and she’s going to pick up the phone. I can text Hetal, and she’s going to text back. If there’s something that we need urgently done, Hetal is going to be here. It’s not going to be something like, ‘We didn’t hear back for 24 hours.’”

Felix Gray was acquired last year by The Hedgehog Co., an e-commerce-focused investment firm. Then late in the year, Roger and some of his former Felix Gray colleagues launched a retail-focused technology company. The new firm also banks with Chase and is served by Jogi and her colleagues.

The firm, a software-as-a-service business, is developing technology that will allow consumer-product companies to keep tabs on how their merchandise is displayed in stores—whether the shelves are adequately stocked, whether items are in their expected position, whether promotional displays are presented correctly, etc.

While considering what to name the startup, Roger said, he and his co-founders brainstormed ideas that conveyed the concepts of health and retail because the company is focused on helping clients maintain a healthy retail presence.

One of those name ideas happened to be Hetal, combining letters from “health” and “retail.”

“We didn’t name [the company] specifically after her, but ultimately, when we had a short list of names, we were like, ‘We really like Hetal,’ and one of the reasons was because [the name] just had really positive connotations for us,” Roger said.

Jogi learned of the name from one of the bankers—New York-based Joe Restivo—she works with.

“He emailed me, he actually pinged me, and said, ‘Hello, can you call me? I have something very important to tell you,’” Jogi recalled.

When she called, Restivo told Jogi their team would be serving Roger again with his new startup and that the company was named Hetal.

“I was like, ‘No way!’ I couldn’t believe it,” Jogi said. “I’m very honored that he did that.”

Jogi said she immediately called Roger to ask if it was true, and he confirmed the news.

Roger said he decided to let someone else deliver the news to Jogi rather than telling her himself. “I just figured that was kind of a fun way to surprise her.”

Choosing the right name for a company can be challenging, local marketing and advertising experts say.

“There is no scientific way to come up with a name,” said Sara Croft, founder and CEO of marketing firm Five Four Partners. The company’s niche is in working with early-stage startups. “I don’t think you’ll ever find the ‘right,’ ‘perfect’ name because there’s no way to measure it, really.”

Croft said she advises founders to choose a name that’s personally meaningful to them, even if that meaning is not apparent to others. Croft, for instance, named her company Five Four as a reference to the jazz she played as a young musician. Five Four is a musical notation—a complex time signature sometimes used in jazz.

Choosing a meaningful company name, Croft said, also creates an opportunity to tell a story about that meaning.

Tom Denari, CEO at Indianapolis-based advertising agency Young & Laramore Inc., agreed. He offered an example from a client, Delta Faucet. When the company wanted to create a separate moniker for its high-end line of fixtures, Young & Laramore created the Brizo brand.

Brizo comes from Greek mythology—it’s the name of a goddess who protected sailors and communicated with them through dreams. So, Denari said, the Brizo name gives Delta a story to tell about the faucets—fixtures that could be part of a customer’s dream kitchen or bathroom.

Jogi is from India, and her first name might be unfamiliar to most Americans. But a company name that’s largely unfamiliar to potential customers can be an advantage, Denari said. “We call that an empty vessel, where you can layer meaning to it,” he said.

The story about Jogi and Hetal Retail filtered up to the very top of Chase—CEO Jamie Dimon himself.

During a visit to Indianapolis last month, Dimon mentioned Jogi from the stage during a town hall meeting at the JW Marriott hotel attended by hundreds of local Chase employees. Jogi also got a chance to have her picture taken with the CEO.

It was the chance of a lifetime for Jogi.

“I had always wanted to meet Jamie Dimon,” she said. “I can’t even describe how happy I was. I think I was on a cloud all day.”•