The big fight for e-commerce talent in India

While I was sourcing for an e-commerce giant, I spoke to a hard core programmer, an IITian, he said he declined the offer from them since it is already established by now! “I'm only looking for startup opportunities at the moment. If you have something in startups where I can start from the scratch.” Notion is that a startup is designed to fail and the concept of successful startups are an exception to the rule. With the risk of failure being so high, most of them starting or joining startup is that they are not afraid of failure. And I believe, they are the most entrepreneurial.

As a Technology recruiter in the internet space, I can feel the increasing popularity of ecommerce start-ups. As confidence in India’s e-commerce story grows, senior techies from other sectors are showing interest in ecommerce firms that promise lucrative payouts. Emerging companies like Toppr, Olacabs, Urban ladder, PropTiger, Practo, Zomato and many more are in the sectors as varied as taxi, restaurant, retail, education, travel, real estate, healthcare and home decor are the flavour of the season.

As per most of them who are passionate about startups, ‘it is the simple understanding of the risk or reward ratio in life. When you are young, you have nothing to lose. If you fail you can always start from bottom at corporations even after three years of graduation. Working on a startup is a lifestyle choice. Only thing that seems to work is hard work’. Their biggest takeaways would be focus, persistence and follow through. Focusing on the goal, persistence in getting things done, and the drive to put the best product out there.

Earlier, in technology, everyone wanted to work at companies like Google or Facebook. Now, other internet companies haven’t lost out to them. Online retailers are hiring the best and brightest making it tough for other technology companies to even attract the talent. Over the past few years other software firms has to deal with the increased aggression of internet companies and since they don’t want to pay these kinds of astronomical salaries, they have lost out, to an extent.

This shows it all. A Senior Programmer job description for an internet product company is as follows:

Do you sweat and breathe about programming? Do you have strong mathematical/problem solving brain? Writing path breaking algorithms?
If you have these smart caliber, then this is the best place to work, learn, innovate and do something impactful to change the way the world thinks.

However, only a fraction of India’s engineering graduates enjoy such patronage and a pool of options to choose from. The fight for India’s best-rated engineering talent is in contrast to what most engineers face after graduation.