No Degree of Pedigree?
A clutch of startups believes that exceptional talent doesn't
reside just in IITs and IIMs but in lesser known institutions as well
Vijay Shekhar Sharma doesn't quite fit the stereotype of a corner
room honcho. In fact, the founder of mobile ecommerce platform Paytm, which
counts Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba and Ratan Tata among its funders,
doesn't work out of a cabin. Sharma, who early this week told ET that he is
contemplating a shift to Bengaluru to find good engineers as well as a middle
class environment, sits amidst his col leagues at Paytm's corporate
headquarters in Noida, on the outskirts of the Capital. If Sharma is keen to
hire top engineering talent, you'd expect him to be eagerly foraging through
the campuses of the premier Indian Institutes of Tech nology (IITs), right? Not
quite. Sharma, a graduate from Delhi College of Engineering, isn't too kicked
about the IIT label; or, for that matter, the Indian Institutes of Management
(IIMs), either, as a hotbed for managerial talent.
“I have a strong urge to work with people who are super sharp,
super intelligent and smarter than IIM and IIT grads,“ he says, adding that
there are plenty of them.
The numbers are proof of Paytm's hiring philosophy. Of the
800-strong technology workforce, only 100 are from IITs; and of the 50-odd
managers, 15 are from IIMs. For good measure, of Paytm's 10-member core team,
only two are from the elite institutes, or `India's Ivy League', as it were. “I
don't think either Ivy League or pedigree matters,“ reckons Sharma.
Sharma may be an outlier on the Indian tech startup landscape, but
he is in esteemed company. Also not too concerned about pedigree of degree is Google.
A few months ago, Laszlo Bock, head of people operations at the search giant,
told CNNMoney that getting grads from Harvard, Stanford and MIT -which Google
did in its younger days -was a wrong hiring strategy. Experience had taught him
that state schools in places like California and New York are also breeding
grounds for exceptional talent.
“What we find is the best people from places like that are just as
good if not better as anybody you can get from any Ivy League school,“ said
Bock. Evidently, Google cares little for grades too (they predict performance
for the first two years of a career but don't matter after that); what it does
look out for is problem-solving skills and a cultural fit (which means you need
to be different rather than like Google). Bock also said Google wants people
who are intellectually humble, and care about the environment around them
because “we want people who think like owners not employees“.
Unarguably it will be easier to find intellect than intellectual
humility on the campuses of premier institutes, be they in the West or in
India. For his part, Paytm's Sharma too has more faith in the common than in
the exceptional. “I believe every extraordinary begins with an ordinary,“ he
says. Sharma, who began his “ordinary“ journey in 2001, when he rolled out his
mobile value added services firm One97 Communications, initially resorted to
hiring talent from tier II (and lower) schools for a pretty straightforward
reason: he couldn't afford to recruit from the top league. Over time, though,
he realised he was getting much more than he had bargained for. “They had fire
in the belly. These ordinaries made us extraordinary,“ says 37-year old Sharma.
Apart from a handful of IITIIM grads, over the years Paytm has unearthed talent
from lesser known institutes such as Graphic Era University and DIT University
in Dehradun.
Amit Sinha, vice-president of business and people at Paytm, is
convinced that hiring from prestigious institutions has its limitations.He's
learnt that through experience -not a good one -after hiring senior honchos
with stellar CVs and fancy designations in India Inc. “We don't want `trophy
hires' -people who may have been chief of product or chief of technology
somewhere. They may be best elsewhere but not for us,“ says Sinha who did his
BTech from ISM-Dhanbad and an MBA from IIM-Calcutta.
Talent and Stickiness
Paytm is one of a clutch of new-age companies -etailers,
app-makers, software product firms and the like -that are going beyond the
IIT-IIM choices for recruitment.And not just because these hires are more
affordable. Recruitment from lesserknown institutions helps companies tap a
more diverse talent pool; access talent that's willing to go that extra mile to
make up for their lack of degree and pedigree; and get on board a workforce
that's largely from smaller cities, which means they tend to be willing to go
through the grind to get ahead. One such startup that's betting big on non-IIT
IIM graduates is Voonik, a personal shopping app cofounded by Su jayath Ali in
August 2014. Ali did his MBA from Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, and
completed his Bachelor of Engineering from Mepco Schlenk Engineering College in
Sivakasi in Tamil Nadu. Voonik has never been to any IIT or IIM for hiring, but
that hasn't stopped seven grads from the premier schools from joining up.
For Ali, the guiding beacon when hiring is stickiness and this
comes from spreading the hiring net across far-flung areas. “They [IIT and IIM
grads] are not loyal and are constantly looking out for other opportunities,“
he contends, adding that for Voonik, tier II candidates have performed better
than IIT IIM grads. “This gave us the confidence to go exclusively to tier II
colleges,“ adds Ali.
Voonik hires from colleges that city slickers are unlikely to have
heard of: Kumaraguru Engineering College in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu; Audisankara
College of Engineering in Nellore, Andhra Pradesh; GITAM School of Technology
in Hyderabad, Telangana; and Sree Vidyanikethan Engineering College in
Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh.“Our culture stresses on being fundamentally nice to
each other and that comes naturally to tier II recruits,“ claims Ali.
If Voonik is looking for stickiness, Frankly. me looks for
attitude. Cofounded in April 2014 by IIT-Delhi alumnus Nikunj Jain, Frankly.me
enables users to get answers from celebrities and experts through video
selfies. Of a headcount of over 100, the startup has only four IITians on its
rolls, including the cofounder, and doesn't go to these elite campuses for
hiring.
Feeling of Been There
“Usually graduates from IITs and IIMs think they have already made
it big in life by getting into such institutions,“ reckons Jain. “This kills
the hunger to achieve m o re . “ A sk Ja i n why h e p re f e r s non-IITians
despite being from the hallowed alumni himself, and Jain has a ready answer:
“They [IIT grads] might be gold to the recruiter, but the recruiter is not gold
to them.So they won't stick with an organisation.“
Jain goes onto say that at Frankly.me, it's about who you are
rather than where you are coming from. To be sure they come from far and wide:
KIET Group of Institutions in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh; Chandigarh Engineering
College; SRM University in Chennai, Tamil Nadu; and JRE Group in Greater Noida,
Uttar Pradesh.
For Zo Rooms, a Delhi-based online budget hotel aggregator, it's
the `bright spark' in the potential candidates that turns out to be the
clincher.Founded by Paavan Nanda along with six others, including three from
IIM-Calcutta in January 2015, Zo has a headcount of over 250, including 25
people from IIT and IIM.
S au my a S i n g h Rathore, Zo's HR head, says that almost two
out of three c andidates with the bright spark tend to come from less
privileged backgrounds. “The more you go to relatively unknown colleges across
the country, the more is the probability of striking gold,“ she says. So, Zo
has an app developer from YMCA Institute of Engineering from Faridabad in
Haryana, the head of acquisitions is from Global Institute of Technology in Jaipur
and the designers are from MIT -not Massachusetts but Maharashtra Institute of
Technology in Pune.
In spite of having four cofounders from IIM-Calcutta, Zo has never
been to any IIM for hiring. Reason: Rathore explains that the IIM grads who
have it in them end up starting their own venture and those left in the campus
are usually risk averse. “They tend to play safe, usually have a fixed way of
thinking and are very expen sive hires,“ she says.
It isn't as if the non-IITIIM grads come cheap, but what works in
favour of startups like Zo is that the enthusiasm to work with them is higher
than with traditional corporations. And that enthusiasm often translates into a
willingness to compromise on the salary front.
Consider, for instance, Utkarsh Srivastava who graduated from SRCC
in Delhi, one of the top commerce colleges in the country. The 22-year old had
an offer of a `8 lakh annual package from an FMCG company but was still willing
to join up as an intern at Zo at just `5,000 per month. “I wanted to prove
myself,“ says Srivastava.He's more than done that, what with his salary now
bumped up to what the FMCG firm had offered him -`8 lakh per an num.
Srivastava, in Rathore's book, is doubtless a “bright spark“.
The trend of an IIT or an IIM co founded startup looking for the
spark outside the big-tag schools is gaining traction. In the pro cess, these
entrepreneurs are also busting the myth that for deep tech-based firms, grads
from the elite schools are a must. Never mind if the founders emerged from such
institutes.
Take Mad Street Den in Chennai, an artificial i n t e l l i ge n c
e b a s e d startup founded by husband-wife duo of Anand Chan drasekaran and
Ashwini Asokan in September 2013. While Chandrasekaran did his PhD from
Stanford University and BTech from IIT-Madras, Asokan completed her Masters in
interaction design from Carnegie Mellon University. The duo has taken the team
count to 19, of which only the founder is from IIT.Reason: they don't hire from
a brand perspective and prefer `underdogs' over the `highly rated' ones. “We
don't want rockstars. We want really smart talent that gives a s**t,“ says
Asokan.
Not Welcome
While acknowledging that the IIT brand does bring with it a higher
probability of really good math and solid core tech skills that are much needed
for an artificial intelligence and computer vision firm like Mad Street Den,
the startup has found the talent it needs at other institutions, like SSN
Engineering in Chennai and VIT, Vellore.
Asokan, who has visited IIT-Madras for hiring, doesn't care how
superior candidates are or think themselves to be. If they don't, respect
diversity and work as a team, they are not welcome, she adds. And it has
happened umpteen times that she found a non-IIT candidate more suited for a
particular role. “The IITians just didn't have the temperament we need,“ she
says.
Another tech-driven startup that doesn't obsess about pedigree is
the two-yearyoung Wigzo, a Delhi-based contextual marketing platform that
relies on data analytics and predictive algorithms to provide realtime content
in emails for marketers.
Cofounder Umair Mohammed admits that their price tag is one reason
he isn't willing to touch grads from the top-rung schools with a bargepole. But
that's not the only reason.“They may make for terrific founders but as
employees they can be terrible,“ says Mo hammed, who did his postgraduate
diploma in entrepreneurship studies from IIM-Kozhikode, and Bachelor in
Computer Application from Jamia Hamdard in Delhi.
Sumit Dinesh Ranka, founder of Thinkpot, which retails a range of
motivational merchandise such as post ers, mugs and stationery, has no problems
with IITIIM grads; he just thinks that “the world is a little biased in their
favour,“ says the alumnus of DJ Sanghvi College of Engineering, Mumbai. He believes
that there is a lot of undiscovered talent outside the premium institutes. So
Ranka gets his talent from middle-ofthe-road colleges in Mumbai like St Francis
Institute of Technology, Sathaye College, Idol College, Father Agnel and Thakur
Education Society. “The burning desire will eventually get the skill sets, but
a good skill set may not be enough to ignite the fire,“ he reckons.
This is not to say that all IITIIM grads are not startup material,
and Sumesh Menon, founder of Woo, a Gurgaon-based matchmaking startup, makes
the point that it is unfair to give the top dogs a bad name. “Graduates from
IITs and top B-schools are usually combat-ready.This shortens the learning
curve for them,“ says Menon, who did his MBA from XIME, Bengaluru, after graduating
from St Aloysius College in Mangalore University.
Best of Both Worlds
Menon relies on a mix of IITIIM and tier II schools, like for
instance, Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology in the Capital. But elite
school or not, the rules of the game are the same for every entrant. Rule No.
1: those switching jobs have to take a 20% salary cut for a year. This helps,
explains Menon, in getting to know two things: First, their willingness to work
with a startup and, second, their killer instinct. “If they prove themselves,
which most of them do, then I compensate them for the hit they have taken for a
year.“
For GreyOrange, a Gurgaon-based robotics startup with a headcount
of over 300, it makes sense to go to top engineering colleges for hiring as it
ensures a healthy return on investment.Cofounded by BITS-Pilani alumni Samay
Kohli and Akash Gupta in 2011, the startup helps ecommerce and logistics
companies improve productivity and automate processes in their warehouse
operations.
“One of the reasons IITs and BITS are preferred for campus
placements is because we get good folks in a short er time and in good number,“
explains Kohli. But there have been times when he has come back empty handed
from campus hiring. Reasons for that: the lack of practical exposure of candidates
to innovative projects and lack of willingness to learn and grow. “An IIT or
BITS brand name doesn't guarantee practical exposure to technology,“ he says,
adding that the attitude of learning as much as possible is more prevalent
amongst engineers from non-IITs.
Alumni from the elite technical and managerial schools are
doubtless a prized lot for their intellectual bandwidth, which gets a chance to
further blossom courtesy of top-notch faculty members and first-class
infrastructure. But that they will end up as firstclass knowledge workers is
not quite a no-brainer. As Paytm's Vijay says: “Let's build India where
performance is rewarded and not where just a degree or an institute's name
entitles one to position or reward.“
ET VIEW
THE TIER II SCHOOL OF THOUGHT
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos poses a set of three questions to his
hiring team to get the best talent: Will you admire this person; will this
person raise the average level of effectiveness of the group; along what
dimension might this person be a superstar? Facebook chairman and CEO Mark
Zuckerberg asks: Would I be happy working for this person? Google's head of
people operations Laszlo Bock cares little about Ivy League tags and grades.The
takeaways from the Amazon, Facebook and Google approaches to hiring are
clearcut: they're looking for diversity rather than a predictable set of
talent; for those for whom fire in the belly isn't just a timeworn buzzword;
for those who are willing to go that extra mile because they don't have a
degree that entitles them to position or reward. Where do you go then to hire?
Not just to the Ivy League schools. In India a few Indian new-age firms like Paytm are realising the benefits of steering clear of IITs and IIMs when hiring.More will follow.
Not just to the Ivy League schools. In India a few Indian new-age firms like Paytm are realising the benefits of steering clear of IITs and IIMs when hiring.More will follow.
Rajiv Singh
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ETM13SEP15
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