When Zomato was setting up shop six years ago, the online restaurant search service had to woo engineers, but many weren’t interested in working for an unknown company. Instead, they wanted to work for larger and prestigious names. Slowly, that is changing.
Indian companies such as Zomato and Flipkart, which make their own technology products rather than provide services are becoming more attractive to the country’s engineering school graduates, and are hiring more people as they alter technology industry hiring patterns.
“We had to convince parents to let their kids work with us. Most people had no idea of what a products startup can offer,” said Gunjan Patidar, Zomato’s chief technology officer, talking about the company’s early days. “They know about Infosys and TCS because that’s where their cousins and friends have worked.”
Backed by Silicon Valley-based venture capitalists, these homegrown companies are not afraid to match salary packages offered by established foreign companies, and offer perks such as employee stock options.
Not everyone is born to be an engineer, but in India, many parents are determined to make it so for their children. India produces about 80,000 engineering graduates every year, according to Sandhya Chintala, vice president of the National Association of Software and Services Companies.
Engineering is considered a prestigious profession. In India’s close-knit family system, jobs can be associated with upward mobility, and can make a son or daughter a better marriage prospect. Children often have no say in the decision.
Working in information technology services with hundreds of thousands of employees, such as Tata Consultancy Services or Infosys, which handle other companies’ technology needs, has long been the easiest way for graduates to go abroad on job assignments, adding to their perceived social worth.
“I often say in India people first become engineers and then they decide what to do with their lives,” said Girish Mathrubootham, founder and chief executive of online customer support platform Freshdesk, which recently raised $31 million in funding from private equity firms Tiger Global, Accel Partners and Google Capital.
Freshdesk lost a potential employee in the early days to TCS because the employee’s parents wanted him to work for a well known company, Mathrubootham said. “Now we have an employee who went to work with Honeywell, but she came back within six months.”
via Software products bring hot career choices as India looks beyond IT services | India Insight.
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