DNA of Indian Startups - People Matters

With burgeoning of landscape of startups in recent years, resources have gained centerstage and have become the critical success parameter. Identifying top talent for a startup is hard. No wonder that the biggest challenge most startup founders speak about is recruiting people. What’s incredible is that this has been the case for many years. 

Top down approach 

The onus lies on the early resources, who are mostly the founders. The real challenge is in identifying creative people as startups prove to be the breeding grounds for innovative solutions 

Risk-takers display curiosity and desire for experimentation, and hence become creative. A startup company is not the safest place to work in. Startup failure rates are much higher than those of Fortune 500 companies.. Employees who are risk-takers would be more willing to assume the risk associated with working in a startup, as they focus on the potential upside of success more than the downside of failure.

What does it mean for mature companies? If you want to hire creative employees--hire resources that have worked in startups. The willingness of these resources to assume the risk of working in startup companies is exactly what inspire them to try things and be creative in your company. And once you hire them--let them try things and fail.

Current trends

The startup ecosystem is witnessing a variety of innovative solutions in a wide range covering job boards, social networks, etc .Companies are creating their own talent pool using big data and analytics.  Companies like HackerRank, HackerEarth, Venturesity are providing competitive platforms and contests to identify ideal candidates for the right job. 

Startups such as Talview, PiQube, Zeta, GrownOut and Belong -- are providing better methods of recruiting, assessing candidates and managing employee payrolls, and are either profitable or close to profitability. This has led to an explosion in HR companies. 

For decades, recruitment was an in-house business. Now companies are outsourcing this critical function to companies, who use almost everything from videos to artificial intelligence to find the best candidate.

As funding for HR startups is gaining momentum and value of resources is attracting more entrepreneurs who are determined to build products solving major people challenges for businesses, there are several startups trying to find a solution for the never-ending challenge of hiring good people. Each one of them is looking at solving the problem from a different perspective — looking at the recruiter’s and its own network and referrals like GrownOut; or building efficiencies in the process by leveraging technology like Talview. Talview, provides video recruitment services to companies. It allows a company to record a candidate's interview in any location and review it later, and uses artificial intelligence to derive insights from a candidate's profile. PiQube, a Chennai-based marketplace for corporate and recruitment consultants uses its data analytics platform to shortlist candidates for recruitment within three days. 

Just days after three co-founders of Housing.com- Abhishek Anand, Sanat Ghosh and Ravish Naresh quit the company, they announced that they will be starting a human resource management startup to bring the process of 'recruiting' completely online by leveraging technologies like semantic search, machine learning and big data. 

The success of Mettl is not a shot in the dark. Delhi-based online assessment company for recruitment, Mettl, works with over 1,000 companies, has 220 employees in six offices .

The change is evident with older companies like Murugappa Group, HCL, Cognizant and CapGemini trying out these services.

Entrepreneurs and investors predict that there is likely to be more collaboration in future. In many ways, India is leading the way in second-generation online hiring platforms based on scalable global technologies. Venture capitalists have started to invest at the early stage as an opportunity where valuations soar quickly. . The space is all set to grow due to the immense opportunity in the space.

Core talent - Back to basics

While HR companies focus on making the recruitment process effective , efficient and tech-enabled, the bigger question is however about the readiness of the existing Indian eco -system with core talent who are creative and risk-takers? Are Indian resources sound on the first principles of fundamentals? Innovation is built on building blocks of fundamental skills and knowledge. There is no doubt that core talent is crucial to success of any business.

The efficacy of recruitment process becomes relevant only when right people exist. Relevance and involvement of domain and tech experts in selection process in startups is of paramount importance. Focus on good understanding of fundamentals is of paramount importance to get the team going and solving any problem. Core team members need to have a thorough understanding of the business. Startup culture thrives on the energy of the stakeholders, to nurture their mission. 

On a note of optimism, there are exciting Indian ventures who are working to solve this critical issue of improving the fundamental skills of resources. SparkBootcamp.in is making remarkable efforts in this direction . SPARK has devised an intense innovative case-study based workshop to enhance higher order skills of fresher engineers, and invites several software companies for placement. A paradigm shift in skills and mindset of resource pool can result in a disruptive change in the existing Indian ecosystem.

Can these out of the box approaches spark the fire for the much-awaited innovation in India?