#epoise

Bengaluru, Sept 15: ePoise, a VC funded and one of the fastest growing Bangalore based start up in the HR space, was awarded the best HR Start Up in the NHRD HR Showcase held at Bengaluru on September 11, 2015. 

After a rigorous short-listing and evaluations by an eminent jury, ePoise was chosen amongst 30 shortlisted start ups. The award was given by K Ramkumar - Executive Director, ICICI Bank and President - National NHRD and was received by Sachin Agrawal, Co-Founder – ePoise along with the team.

The jury evaluated the start-ups on various criteria including scalability of the idea, its revenue potential, traction garnered and the overall impact. ePoise received accolades from the judges and also suggestions on how ePoise can support Digital India campaign, as it can bring opportunities to people on their mobile phones, overcoming the constraints of time and geography. 

 ePoise too has pledged its support to Digital India further to its support to NHRD's nationwide initiative to build a scalable connect between academia and industry.

 Ramesh Ranjan, Vice President, NHRD Bangalore said, "ePoise clearly stood out in terms of their revolutionary product, simplicity, user experience and execution capability. We have an example here of an innovation from India that can go global."

The HR Showcase is a pan India program and the signature event of NHRD Bangalore. It is a platform for Corporate Organisations to showcase their Best HR Practices, CSR Initiatives, Research Scholars to present their HR Research Papers, HR Startups to present their innovative ideas and HR Product & Service Providers to showcase their Products & Services. 

This year there are 65 Corporate HR Best Practices, 20 CSR Initiatives, 36 HR Research papers, 30 HR Startups and 25 HR Product & Service providers who participted in this year’s event. The highly successful event was attended by leading companies and more than 1500 visitors from the HR Community from across the country.

ePoise has previously received many other feathers in its hat. It was selected as the winner of “NASSCOM EMERGE 50, 2014 - India’s 50 most innovative software product centric companies’. 

For our StartupHiringSeries, we had a chat with Mr. Ganesh Balakrishnan, co-founder at Momoe. Read on to find out what he has to say about his startup and the current system of hiring! 

Name: Ganesh Balakrishnan, Co-Founder

Startup: Momoe Q1. Please tell us a little bit about Momoe.

Momoe is a mobile payment app that allows you to pay at real world merchants like restaurants, retail stores, grocery stores, pharmacies and so on. Unlike Paytm, Mobiquik or others that focus on mobile recharges, utility bill payments and e-commerce,, we are focused on the offline world; where the card or cash exchange takes place.

Q.2 What are the key challenges in hiring the talent that you are looking for?

These are a few things that we have found to be a challenge for hiring talent:

1. Big expectations for startup hiring: They expect everyone to be a Flipkart and offer a million dollar salary because that isn’t the case for 99.9% of the Startups currently in business. It becomes an issue especially when we talk to people from a corporate background because they don’t understand the concept of investing in risk and growth of a company rather than cash in hand.

2. The process of finding people and interviewing people is also a bit of an issue when compounded with the expectation mismatch that I mentioned earlier because you end up spending a lot of time talking to people who seem interested but that often fizzles out when we start talking numbers on the salary front and it’s the biggest concern that we have so far.

3. Lead time is also proving to be an issue because Startups need to hire fast as the needs are immediate, we can’t wait for three months for the candidate to join. In three months, the company could have changed and the requirements or role they are required to fill could have changed or not exist anymore even.

4. The Startup world requires a lot of flexibility because a person will have to take on multiple roles depending on the situation. Not everybody is comfortable with that because the roles are not always defined and it requires an initiative on the part of the candidate. For people who have been working in the corporate world, it requires a shift in mindset and that’s why we prefer to hire people with less than two years of experience because they are more open to learning.

Q3. Do conventional systems of hiring work for you? What would you suggest as an alternative.

Haha.I don’t know. If I knew the answer to that, I would start a Hiring Startup myself! We seem to have a problem finding recruiters who understand the skill set that a Startup requires. They send me resumes of people that seem to have the required skill set but when you talk to them, they won’t know it and expect you to hire someone else to do the job that they were required to do.  

Q4. How would you explain the sudden demand for Start-up jobs in India? Do you think we have a conducive atmosphere for growth?

The time is right I guess; the Government is supportive, the regulations are falling in place, the consumers are waking up to technology and starting to spend a little more. There is also a lot of interest among various parties. Things are getting better and moving in the right direction.

The ePoise team had the pleasure of interacting with Mr. Niketh Sabbineni on hiring practices and here’s what he had to say! 

Name: Niketh Sabbineni

Company: Bookpad

Q1. Please tell us a little bit about Bookpad

Bookpad is a technology company focused on solving problems with Document Handling for our customers. We believe that as more and more Documents are being moved to the cloud, our customers would need productivity tools to access/manage their online content.

Q2  What are the key challenges in hiring the talent that you are looking for?

Hiring was always a big challenge for us. Here are some of the problems that we faced:

a. Getting the right talent : We had specific requirements, for example we wanted candidates who were strong with systems. And often it would be hard to find candidates with specific skill sets

b. Since we were a fairly young startup, funding is always a problem. Most of the candidates expected salaries way way over our budget

c. Candidates never understood the concept of equity over salary.

d. Often  most of the candidates that reached out were freshers, where as we were looking for people with some experience.

Q3. What role do you think the companies play in managing the candidate experience?

Companies play a huge role in managing candidate experience. At Bookpad and for me personally, a candidate is like a customer. You want to make sure that the interview experience right from the initial short-listing to the final offer acceptance is as smooth as possible. You want the candidate to understand the company and his job as much as possible and we try to be as transparent as we possibly can. Even if a candidate doesn't join your company, he can potentially be you best ambassador and refer other suitable candidates and that too for free!

Q4. Do you think India has a conducive atmosphere for Start-ups to thrive?

India definitely has a conducive atmosphere for Startups to thrive. The ecosystem is maturing very nicely. The 3 elements;  startups, customers and VCs are all coming together now. Startups need customers to thrive and for that they often need funding and more funding means more customers. This cycle is now also being fueled by the Indian Government, bodies like Nasscom, a host of accelerator programs etc. Also since the awareness is so high, there a lot of people who are willing to trade their job at MNCs and come work for a startup.

Q5. What role do you think technology has to play in the process of recruiting? Do you think it could simplify the process?

Everyday there are new startups coming up and older ones are shutting down. So in such uncertain circumstances, it is hard for startups to invest in a dedicated HR team or even invest in building infrastructure for interviewing etc. This gap can only be fulfilled by technology which allows me to quickly identify a suitable candidate, interview them in a hassle free manner and make an offer as quickly as possible.