So what if winter’s coming? These startuppers are keeping it hot

Startups interview candidates for jobs at the Headstart Higher event in the IBM Innovation Center in Bangalore. Photo credit: Headstart Network, Bangalore.

Sharda Gupta has a master’s degree in computer science from Manipal Institute of Technology, whose most famous alumnus is Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft. Sharda is a long way from Satya, but she’s doing all right. In the nine years since she passed out of Manipal, she has worked for four MNCs – iGate, BNP Paribas, Wells Fargo, and Philips.

So what is she doing at Headstart Higher, a hiring event in Bangalore for early stage startups?

“It’s so refreshing. I’ve heard more innovative ideas in half an hour here than in my entire two years at Philips,” she tells me with a wry smile.

She had colleagues who had been working for 15-20 years at Philips, comfortable in a steady job. But, she also had techie friends working for startups in Bangalore, and the thought of joining them in a more exciting environment kept nagging away. Finally, she took the plunge.

Didn’t recent headlines screaming about layoffs in Zomato, TinyOwl, and Housing scare her off? Hadn’t she heard that winter was coming?

Well, if it does come, “firing will happen everywhere, not just in startups,” she says phlegmatically. Her forte is project management, app support, and user tracking, and she anticipates no let-up in demand for those skills. “I will always fit in somewhere,” says Sharda, waiting patiently for her turn to get into a series of interviews with 10 startups.

Wide range of startups

The 10 startups had been chosen from over 100 that had applied. Headstart – a non-profit body of volunteers helping the ecosystem grow – mostly picks early stage startups with promise.

A startup makes a pitch at the Headstart Higher jobs event in Bangalore. Photo credit: Headstart Network, Bangalore.

The chosen ones had a wide range – from retail analytics to enterprise software for healthcare to mobile education. There was even an offline startup called Hungry Belly supplying 10,000 meals a month to its corporate clients in Bangalore, which wanted to add a tech booster to scale up to 25,000 meals a month.

Avoiding wildly burning cash for growth – that’s the theme right now in India’s startup scene after two boom years.

The 30 candidates to appear before these startups had also been shortlisted from a number ten times as many. Rahul Gulati, events lead at Headstart, sees little sign of layoffs discouraging people from applying. But now, there’s more awareness of what they want from working at startups.

Ravi Kumar, for example, has already completed two six month stints with startups – one of which is in stealth mode – since graduating with a BE in computer science last year. He’s been working as a front-end developer and now wants a broader end-to-end experience.

Winter will be welcome after the heat