Why B school grads are heading to start-ups

Saturdays can bring mixed emotions. Those who spend them working end up grumpy while those who manage to keep themselves out of the office remain chirpy mostly. It is one of those Saturdays at Shopclues, an e-commerce company, and a team of seven engineers is about to lock itself in the office, on a weekend, for 48 hours.

And, believe it or not, they are not just chirpy, they are positively excited. They have managed to push out fancy office furniture from the conference room and stuff it with portable mattresses, Coke, pizzas and their favourite foods. The conference room is now a boot camp for software geeks — someone is a pro in html, another knows php and Java and someone else is an expert in search engine optimisation. Objective: To come up with a mobility proof of concept for their company’s portal.

More of a college dorm than an office, the conference room at Shopclues becomes a cauldron of innovation and peer learning, where people come together to make and discover new things.

“The attrition at Shopclues is zero at the middle and senior level and it is because of the conviction everyone shares for his or her work,” says Radhika Ghai Aggarwal, Chief Marketing Officer and founder of ShopClues.com. She is certain they (employees) will not shift easily if an opportunity comes to them. “People believe in what they are doing here, there is so much room to grow and learn,” she adds.

The rapidly growing start-up seems to be getting it right when it comes to managing employees. As part of the organisational building strategy, the company has introduced an employee engagement module called 4Ts – in which, ‘T’ stands for team, technique, time and task. Employees are free to choose their projects and even teams.

“Post 2008 many companies have started taking employee engagement seriously, some offer workshops and trainings, and some have even redesigned employee compensation, and floated eSops,” says Jyorden T Misra, founder member and Managing Director of Spearhead InterSearch, an HR consulting firm. “Around that time compensation was most important but over time a deeper component has come into play which makes young employees think about what will make me stick to a company for a while.”

Start-ups are leveraging the situation and changing the rules of the game when it comes to employee management.

They are making sure the best talent sticks with them and don’t turn to MNCs in lure of compensation and facilities. These newly-born companies are able to retain talent by offering solutions to job seekers’ key pain points – lack of autonomy, delegation of work, fixed and stringent working hours, little room for knowledge and skill enhancement and company’s lack of involvement with employees at a personal level.

Tanya Seth, who has an MBA from a top business school, opted to work for a start-up in place of an MNC. “I have always looked for a great role and believe that learning has to be prioritised over money, especially at an early stage of the career,” says Seth, who has been working with FrogIdeas for a few months now. “It’s been a huge learning curve since day one, we get to create and execute solutions for clients across industries. There’s never a dearth of ideas here.” According to Jatin Modi, CEO and Co-Founder of FrogIdeas, a digital strategy and marketing company, the firm encourages employees to take ownership, which means the company has to simply get out of the way of smart people and allow them to flourish. “There are no cabins or cubicles in the office, teams sit on long tables, which reduce boundaries and enable a flat structure when it comes to decision-making,” he says. The founders have given the team complete autonomy to pick and execute projects and tasks in a manner as they (team members) see fit. “This is regardless of experience and is dependent on passion, willingness and ability to execute only,” says Modi. “Regular training through industry experts, flexible work hours, complete autonomy, delegated decision-making, the opportunity to work on projects of choice, an informal work culture, and chance to create globally visible campaigns regardless of experience – all this creates a culture of excellence,” he adds. FrogIdeas has 21 full-time employees on the board currently and the number is likely to reach 65 in the coming year.

The start-up has expanded operations in three cities and two countries within one year of operations and is clocking revenue of $1 million. Its clients range from e-commerce, IT, banking, consumer durables, telecom, and real estate to hospitality. FrogIdeas describes the internet as a marsh and the company helps its clients to overtake their competitors through innovative digital strategy.

Another breed of employees is taking shape at fast-growing, highly technology-driven start-ups by fresh graduates who opted out of placements to pursue their own businesses.

These techpreneurs are cultivating a force of employees who are competitive, and motivated to prove their mettle to the industry. The exposure one gets in such start-ups cannot be matched by large, established companies. For Instance, Housing.com, India’s first map-based home search portal started by 12 IITians, has grown multi-fold within two years of starting-up. The organisation has been on a hiring spree since its first round of funding worth worth $2.5 mn by Nexus Venture Partners.

The company essentially picks up young individuals who are extremely ambitious and competitive.

“The constant urge to perform the best to one’s ability creates an atmosphere of healthy competition that challenges each employee on a daily basis,” says Advitiya Sharma, Co-Founder & Marketing Head of Housing.com.

“This culture helps maintain the level of motivation we would like to have around the office.”

Housing.com’s workplace is designed to exude a sense of excitement that makes it a vibrant and energetic space to work in.

“Surprise office parties when the lights and Wifi go off, and the office turns into a nightclub, are pretty efficient at keeping our employees motivated,” he adds.

The company has embraced the culture where each individual creates a significant impact to the business. “Each individual would get a lot of responsibility and this, we have learned, brings in the thirst for excellence,” Sharma says.

Housing.com currently has about 1,200 employees on-board which includes around 200 professionals from IITs, IIMs, ISB and other top colleges in India.

Young and fast-growing firms in technology, internet, ecommerce, and digital marketing space are doubling in size and manpower every year.

In the second phase of growth, however, when the employee strength exceeds multifold, these firms may face a situation where the initial set of people are highly engaged, whereas the newer set of people are not engaged at all, according to Madhur Ramani, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of a business HR advisory firm, Stratum Consulting.

“This is where a well thought out engagement strategy will become very critical in these companies,” says Ramani.

“Weekly initiatives like Google’s TGIF (Thank God It’s Friday) initiative — where the company’s top management engages with all employees on a weekly basis and answers their queries — go a long way in keeping the newer set of employees engaged.”