Just out of school teens turn entrepreneurs

Just out of school teens turn entrepreneurs

Call them India’s Restless Teenage Inc. Some are still in high school, some barely out of it, and they are into fascinating ventures — a transaction platform for bitcoins, applications for Google Glass, and more. They are even mentoring older entrepreneurs on technology and business.

Take Kshitij Kumar, 18, who has just finished class 12 from Khaitan Public School in Delhi, and is heading to the University of Illinois for a degree in business and computer science. He started a magic tricks tutorial portal called Horizonmagic.com when he was 10. Four years ago, he started a software firm called Blix that created products, including Snappy, that allows users to covert pictures into any format, and Mathomatic, a free math problem solving tool.

Now he’s working on developing an app called Getcaption.io for Google Glass. “If you are talking to someone whose language you do not understand, the app will show you, on the glass, the translation of what is being said in a language that you understand – like subtitles in a movie,” Kumar says. It’s still work in progress, and currently offers translated subtitles only in English. The app can also take pictures of, say, each of three people in a conversation, and lay out the entire conversation in a Whatsapp-like format.

Joel John, 19, has just joined Symbiosis University in Pune for a Bachelor’s in business administration. People call him a bitcoins guru. “There’s nothing that he does not know about bitcoins,” says Brij Bhasin of GSF, a startup accelerator and investor that has a programme called High School Geeks that not only helps children like John and Kumar to build their businesses, but also uses them to educate their older entrepreneur members.

Barely out of school, teens turn tech entrepreneurs

When John was 15, he started a server rental business for gamers, and then another that allowed people who took surveys to, say, read a book for free online. “In these stints, I developed an interest in payment processing. I began to research the area, and delved into bitcoins. I thought that with bitcoins, one could bring down remittance charges to a fraction of what money transfer companies charge. It would even allow, say a farmer in Mizoram with no registered business and no bank account, to do business with someone in the US,” John says. Alongside his Symbiosis course, John is now busy building a bitcoin transaction platform that he hopes the world will do business on one day.

Even about a decade ago, kids with such accomplishments in business were a rarity. In 2000, Suhas Gopinath, then 16, established a web design company in Bangalore and was celebrated as the world’s youngest CEO. But there was just the one Suhas Gopinath. Today you see them all over, thanks to the encouragement by parents, schools, the bustling startup environment, and technology platforms that allow for easy discoverability of talent.

Sharad Sharma, co-founder of software product association iSpirt, narrates a story about a parent who was worried about his son’s performance at school, and wanted Sharma to guide him. “I reluctantly agreed and then I found that the kid, Raghav Sood, had already developed several Android apps, had written a book on building an augmented reality application that had been published by Springer (an international publisher of tech and science books). And I wondered if the parent was mocking me. Who was I to guide a kid like that!” he says.

Sharma attributes the phenomenon of early-age accomplishments partly to the mobile internet. “It is so enabling. You can do programming from anywhere. Also, these technologies have made discovering a Ramanujan so much easier. Ramanujan (the brilliant mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan who died in 1920) was recognized only because of a letter he sent to Hardy (English mathematician GH Hardy),” he says.

Organizations like GSF are also beginning to actively engage with this segment. “I got hands-on experience on how to scale a business and got access to GSF’s network of mentors,” says Gurgaon-based Gautam Gupta, who at 13 co-developed a social media sharing plugin called SexyBookmarks that was later acquired by Shareaholic. He has just finished school from Amity International and is heading to the University of Waterloo, Canada, for a course in software engineering.

Another GSF high-school geek is Anmol Maini, who built a robotic arm at school and now is envisioning movable walkways in cities that can obviate the need for cars. Microsoft has a student partner programme in India, and Pratik Mohapatra, 16, an 11th class student of National Public School, Bangalore, is its youngest partner. Mohapatra has developed multiple apps for Microsoft and Google, and has won several competitions, including one of Microsoft’s recently that entitles him to a trip to watch the US Formula 1 Grand Prix.

“These kids have a good sense of apps, technology, about how younger people use them. We learn as much from them as they learn from us,” says GSF’s Bhasin.

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Are you making the most of your EPF

Are you making the most of your EPF

Though it keeps a low profile, the Employees’ Provident Fund is one of the most effective ways to save for retirement. Find out how you can gain big from it.

A recent survey by global professional services firm Towers Watson says that saving for retirement is a big concern for Indian employees, with 71% of the respondents worried that they are not saving enough.

In another survey conducted by ET Wealth last year, respondents listed volatility of returns (32%), low savings rate (26%) and lack of reliable financial advice (25.4%) as their biggest retirement worry.

That’s surprising, because a majority of the respondents of both surveys were already investing in a product that takes care of all these concerns.

The Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF) managed by the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) ensures that an individual puts away enough for retirement every month. With 12% of his basic salary and a matching contribution by his employer, a subscriber to the EPF should be able to accumulate a decent amount by the time he retires.

If someone started working at the age of 25 in April 2000 at a basic salary of Rs 20,000 a month and got a raise of 10% every year, he would roughly have accumulated Rs 32 lakh in his PF account by now. If the trend continues, he would have saved about Rs 2.46 crore by the time he is 55 years old (see graphic) and more than Rs 3.5 crore of tax-free money on retirement at 58. 

Despite the tremendous opportunity, most contributors to the EPF won’t reach even the Rs 1 crore milestone. More than 13% of the respondents to the ET Wealth survey withdrew their PF balance each time they changed jobs. Withdrawing from the PF can be counter-productive on two counts.

One, the withdrawn amount is usually blown away on discretionary expenses and retirement savings are back to square one.

Two, if the individual withdraws his PF balance before completing five years, the amount becomes taxable.

Another 20% of the respondents to our survey said they dipped into the PF corpus for other needs. The EPFO allows an individual to withdraw from his PF account for specific needs, such as constructing or buying a house, children’s education and marriage or a medical emergency.

Should EPF invest in stocks?

The other concern about volatility of returns is also not an issue with the PF. The EPF invests in safe debt instruments that deliver stable returns. EPFO rules allow the EPF to invest up to 15% of its corpus in stocks but the Central Board of Trustees has steadfastly ignored suggestions to this effect.

Many financial experts, including Finance Ministry officials, have castigated the EPFO for this aversion to stocks. They say the EPF is a low-yield debt-based scheme that can never beat inflation. At a recent meeting of the EPFO, it was pointed out that the returns offered by the EPF since 2005, when adjusted to inflation during the period, were in the negative.

The Rs 100 put into the EPF in 2005, when marked to inflation, were worth only Rs 97 now. Experts argue that the only way the EPF can beat inflation is by investing some portion of its gargantuan corpus in the stock markets.

And gargantuan it is. The EPF corpus was Rs 6,32,129 crore as on 31 March 2013. If you factor in the interest earned by the corpus in 2013-14 and the estimated Rs 80,000 crore incremental contributions during the year, the EPF corpus could be close to Rs 7,65,000 crore. This is almost six times the AUM of the largest mutual fund house (HDFC Mutual Fund with an AUM of Rs 1,30,000 crore). Even if a 1% sliver of this gigantic corpus flows into the equity market, it would mean an inflow of Rs 7,650 crore.

But while the inflow of fresh investments will be good for the equity markets, they may not have the same impact on investor returns.

The New Pension Scheme (NPS) funds for central government workers are allowed to invest up to 15% of their corpus in Niftybased stocks in the same proportion as their weightage in the index. We looked at the SIP returns of these funds in the past 5-6 years and found that they were not significantly higher than what the 100% debt-based EPF has churned out. In fact, two of the funds have actually given lower returns (see graphic).

This despite the fact that these funds have invested right through the bear phase of 2008-9 and the markets are at all time high levels right now.

Our calculations are not based on pointto-point returns but on SIP returns. We took into account the NAVs of the first reporting day of each month and then worked out the internal rate of return.

Don’t shun equities altogether

Having said that, we must add that a certain portion of your retirement savings should certainly be allocated to equities. It’s only that this equity exposure need not be through the EPF. Any retirement plan has to be a combination of several investments. Keep the EPF as the debt portion of your retirement plan and invest 5-20% in equities through a diversified fund.

Interestingly, though the pension fund managers of these NPS funds can invest up to 15% of the corpus in equities, they have allocated less than 8% to stocks. “Pension fund managers have been conservative because markets have been volatile. The negative impact of equity is magnified in the short term so they have shied away from maxing the equity exposure to 15%,” says Manoj Nagpal, CEO of Mumbai-based wealth management firm Outlook Asia Capital.

On its part, the EPFO is now using professional fund managers for investing its corpus. “The move towards professional fund management and linking returns only from accrued income and reserves is a big positive,” says Nagpal.

Compulsory and linked

The third concern about the lack of reliable advice is also laid to rest by the EPF. It is compulsory and an individual has no option but to contribute to it. What’s more, it ensures regular savings.

According to estimates by HR firms, the average hike this year was 10.5%. How much was your hike? More importantly, did you increase your SIPs by the same proportion? Not many people care to do that. They spend more, buy more, party more but keep investing the same amount.

The EPF is different. Your contribution is linked to your income, so when you get a pay hike, your EPF contribution will go up in the same proportion. If your basic salary is Rs 30,000 a month, you will be contributing Rs 3,600 plus a matching contribution by your employer. If you get a 20% hike and your basic becomes Rs 36,000, your contribution will automatically increase to Rs 4,320. This is a great way to build a corpus in the long-term.

The icing on the cake is that you can invest more than 12% of your basic salary. Millions of Indians welcomed the move when the budget hiked the annual investment limit in the PPF to Rs 1.5 lakh. But Delhi-based PSU manager Naveen Parashar was not one of them.

“I can’t understand why salaried taxpayers are so excited about this development. They have always had the option to invest in the Voluntary Provident Fund (VPF) and get the same tax benefits offered by the PPF,” he says nonchalantly. Parashar puts an additional Rs 14,700 into the VPF every month, taking his overall contribution to the EPF to Rs 31,700 a month. This forced saving has helped him build a sizeable corpus in the past 15 years.

Central Provident Fund Commissioner K.K. Jalan echoes Parashar’s views. “The VPF is an ideal saving instrument for high-income earners looking to build a tax-free corpus. Unlike the PPF, there is no limit to how much one can invest,” he says (see interview).

EPS: The problem area

While EPF is a great way to save for retirement, it has its share of problems. One big wart is the Employee Pension Scheme (EPS).

Launched in 1995, it is a black hole that gobbles more than it offers. The amount flowing into the EPS every month is very small, so most people don’t even notice the deduction.

It is 8.33% of the employer’s contribu-tion to the EPF on behalf of the employee, with a cap of Rs 6,500 a year. But the monthly contribution of Rs 541 can grow into a huge amount over the long-term. Even at a modest interest rate of 8%, this tiny amount can burgeon into Rs 12.41 lakh in 35 years.

However, this is not what happens to your contribution to the scheme. The amount just flows into a pension pool without earning any interest for you. The pension amount is calculated by taking into account the number of years you had contributed to the scheme and your basic pay at the time of retirement (see graphic).

Three years ago, an expert panel had suggested that the EPS be replaced with a provident fund-cum-annuity combo under which contributions would flow into individual accounts. The panel suggested that the balance in the pension account be used to buy an annuity on retirement. However, the CBT rejected the panel’s recommendations.

Mercifully, the EPFO has now raised the eligibility ceiling for EPS to Rs 15,000 a month. New joinees who are earning more than that will not be covered by the rip-off scheme. The entire contribution of their employer will flow into their EPF accounts.

The new look EPFO

The EPFO is fast shedding its dowdy image and using technology to turn into a more professional and nimble organisation. It has made several other investor-friendly changes in the past 12 months. Last year, it introduced the online facility for transferring the balance to a new account. This year, it has made it possible to check the account online. Going forward, all members will have a Universal Account Number which will be portable across employers and cities.

UANs have already been allotted to 4.17 crore active contributors to the EPF. In the first four months of this financial year, the EPFO settled nearly 43 lakh claims. Of these, more than 68% were settled in less than 10 days.

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Analytical skills must-have for LPO job

Analytical skills must-have for LPO job

The legal outsourcing industry has seen significant changes since 2008, where some companies are prompted by the slow down and others a result of evolution of the legal services market.

Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO) buyers are recognising and treating their LPO providers as partners and the staff as an extension of their enterprise. In an exclusive interaction with TimesJobs, Kunal Purohit, country head -India, Integreon Managed Services shares job outlook of the LPO industry.

What is the current outlook of the LPO industry in India?

The legal outsourcing industry has seen significant changes since 2008, where some companies are prompted the by slow down and others a result of evolution of the legal services market. This growth has led to a change in the hiring needs. Companies are getting more selective about who they hire and are paying greater attention to domain knowledge above everything else.

What is the recruitment trend in this industry?

As the industry moves further up the value chain to incorporate more complex, high-value tasks, skilled labour is no longer an option but a necessity. LPO buyers are recognising and treating their LPO providers as partners and the staff as an extension of their enterprise. With this evolving engagement model, it is imperative that the industry hires, nurtures and retains the best talent to sustain quality client engagement and delivery.

Which are the emerging skill-sets in the LPO industry?

Technology is ceasing to be a sector of its own and has seeped into the LPO industry as an enabler and driver. At Integreon, we use both proprietary software as well as third-party solutions to offer technology enabled services to our clients, particularly for electronic discovery and contract management and review. Being a specialist provider, the complexity of work that we do for our clients is significantly higher than traditional BPO firms. Therefore, when we hire candidates, the pre-requisites are strong domain knowledge and high analytical skills.

What are the compensation trends in the industry?

The average salary in the industry is set to rise given the industry growth and the demand for high skill talent. The compensation that we offer to our employees is comparable to those offered by law firms and corporate legal departments. Acquiring skilled talent is important to us and if a candidate is talented and experienced we are willing to pay an above average salary.

What will be the game changers in recruiting by technology?

When it comes to technology’s involvement in recruiting, I think social integration in recruitment strategy is imperative. Traditional routes of recruiting are still efficient however, they have to be supplemented by social channel. It is cost effective, has one of the biggest reserves of candidates and is an effective channel to spread the word and get a quick response to job postings no matter what level.

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Skills you need to be enterprise mobility specialist

Skills you need to be enterprise mobility specialist

The need for mobile-enabling enterprise apps for enhancing employee efficiency is necessitating organisations to hire enterprise mobility specialists who can design a clear enterprise mobility road map for the business. We look at the core skills IT professionals need to have to evolve as enterprise mobility specialists.

Today, individuals need not be chained to their office desks to access various enterprise apps, emails and other official productivity tools.  With mobile devices evolving into powerful and smart computing devices and with the emergence of 3G network, enterprises are looking at mobile-enabling business apps such as CRM, ERP and even HR related apps such as leave and attendance management systems. This is done with an aim to primarily derive tangible business benefits as well as improve employee productivity.

Added to this is the trend of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) which is catching up within enterprises, where employees carrying their choice of mobile devices are asking the IT team to let them start using enterprise apps on the mobiles.

A plethora of mobile devices trying to access the enterprise IT network is putting a lot of stress on the IT team and making it essential for them to have an enterprise mobility specialist onboard. “Today, almost 80-90 percent of organisations are at some stage of adopting enterprise mobility. Thus, there is a strong demand for enterprise mobility specialist, who can identify mobility necessities across different employee groups, understand the end computing requirements and envision the future mobility roadmap for the organisation,” said Nilesh Goradia head, pre-sales, India Subcontinent, Citrix.

Arindam Ray Chaudhury, COO, AgreeYa Solutions added thathaving an enterprise mobility specialist in place is a necessity for enterprises in order to standardise the evolving enterprise mobility practices within the organisation and to keep an eye on security risks and more.

“Mobility experts should have a depth of expertise in areas including mobile app development, mobile device management, user experience development, mobility security and mobile commerce. Having a background in technologies like near field communication is another strong value-add for aspiring mobility experts,” said Arindam.

Knowledge of core areas for an IT professional to move to enterprise mobility specialist roles:

• Experience of full mobile software development life cycle, gathering requirements, software architecture, design, coding, integration and testing

• Experience in native app development for various operating systems

• Understanding different versions and features of operating systems such as iOS, android, symbian, windows and others

• Knowledge of various security protocols like SSL and security mechanisms like client certificates and basic authentication

• Familiarity with iOS human interface guidelines, android user interface design and Windows phone guidelines for smart phones and tablets

• Understanding various mobile device management solutions available, which could be leveraged to manage large number of mobile devices from a single window

• In-depth understanding of mobility ecosystem and current trends

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Storage technology specialists role emerging

Storage technology specialists role emerging

Storage technology specialists need to have a product line exposure or certification in various storage technologies and also have a good grasp over emerging technologies like cloud computing, big data and virtualization so as to continually simplify the storage infrastructure and improve its performance

Among enterprises, the importance of tapping various data channels be it social, cloud, mobile, analytics or internet, is emerging as a necessity to keep the business competitive and ahead of peers.

A recent IDC report corroborates that over the next decade, the amount of information that would have to be managed by enterprise datacenters is set to grow by a factor of 50 and the number of files the datacenter will have to deal with will grow by a factor of 75 at least. This has forced enterprises to rethink their storage management strategies and hire the best domain specialists who are experts in storage technolgies.

Profile of a storage specialist

Today, an organization has loads of business data thriving in silos across various storage devices. The key role of a storage specialist is to analyse what business data should be placed at which storage tier and why. Let us look at an example.

Within enterprises, there are a few critical enterprise apps – like a business intelligence tool – which need to respond quickly to any data centric query. Any lag in response by the app could impact a prospective business opportunity. In such a situation, it is the storage specialist who needs to strategise and decide to place such apps on high performance storage devices such as flash storage.

Then there are certain non-critical enterprise data which need to be archived and not be retrieved frequently. Here, it is the storage domain specialist who critically analyses the data and decides to place it on either low performance data storage devices or even on cloud storage, where data rests on third party servers.

Considering that an enterprise generally has a mix of storage technologies from a variety of storage vendors, a storage specialist needs to be well versed with the basics of various storage technologies.

Gap in demand and supply

“The rapid growth in digital information is demanding more and more trained storage professionals, resulting in a shortfall of skilled storage professionals. There is a big professional skill gap when it comes to new technology shifts of cloud and big data that are transforming the role of IT in business,” said Krishna Kant, head, EMC Academic Alliance – South Asia & Russia. 

Today, organizations are scouting for storage technology specialists who can juggle with a range of storage technologies. The fact that big data analytics, virtualisation and cloud technologies are quite closely inter-linked with storage technologies, is also necessitating storage specialists to up-skill themselves to understand these emerging technologies.

“Some of the skill-sets which storage domain specialists must possess range from a deep knowledge of storage protocols to enhancing performance quality of enterprise apps running on the storage devices and knowledge of how to work with cloud,” said, Supriya Dhanda, HR head of SanDisk.

Key specialisations for a storage specialist

• Product line exposure or certification in various storage technologies such as tape libraries, serial attached SCSI (SAS) technologies, network attached storage (NAS) technologies and direct attached storage (DAS)

• Storage administration skills and clear concepts of storage arrays from various storage tools

• Advanced hands-on trouble shooting exposure on enterprise storage products/tools and SAN switches

• Intelligence to design, deploy and support enterprise storage area network (SAN) fabric and manage data back-ups

• Ability to work with the database and application teams to understand the specific storage requirements for new projects and get them up and running within the stipulated time

• Comprehensive grasp of emerging technologies such as big data analytics, cloud computing and virtualisation and how they should ideally connect and impact enterprise storage infrastructure

• Ability toseek out and implement new technologies to continually simplify the environment while improving security and performance of storage infrastructure

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Data helps HR to make top performers successful

Data helps HR to make top performers successful

The science behind smarter workforce is to drive measurable business outcomes by integrating talent, culture and work.

By applying a combination of analytics, capability of workforce science and social, organisations can attract, retain and develop the right talent to create a collaborative work culture that seamlessly connects people and enhances the speed at which work is delivered. Anmol Nautiyal, director – IBM Social Business & IBM Smarter Workforce shares how cloud-based solutions and data & analytics helps in creating a smarter workforce. 

What do you mean by Smarter Workforce?

Smarter Workforce is the ability to instill precision in talent decisions to improve the measurable business outcomes for an organisation. By applying a combination of analytics, capability of workforce science and social, organisations can attract, retain and develop the right talent to create a collaborative work culture that seamlessly connects people and enhances the speed at which work is delivered.The concept of Smarter Workforce can broadly be described as re-inventing work in this era of empowered employees.

How can cloud-based solutions help easing out talent challenges?

Cloud has immense potential to integrate the values that are derived by combining social, behavioural science and analytics. Today, organisations need the integrated capability to manage the talent cycle of employees. To this  end,  IBM  recently  launched its SaaS-based Talent Suite that allows Chief  Human  Resources  Officers  (CHROs)  and  C-Suite executives to gain actionable  insights  from  the  deluge  of  data shared every day by their workforce.

Using this solution, HR professionals can look at large volumes of employee data such as work experience, social engagement, skills development and individual interests to identify the qualities that make top performers successful. Organisations and teams can then use those models to pursue candidates   through   additional targeted social marketing on social recruiting sites, where job seekers matching the profile are connected with opportunities matching their skills.

Organisations can accelerate the on-boarding and the integration of new hires through enterprise social capabilities. This helps employees share information and find the right experts to accelerate learning and increase productivity and engagement, while at the same time providing a way for leaders to manage their teams more effectively.

Through analytics and reporting, line-of-business leaders can better understand emerging employee trends and more effectively manage each individual career path in areas like skill attainment, performance appraisals, compensation and succession planning.

What is the role of data and analytics in creating a Smarter Workforce? What should organisations do to maximize the ROI on this?

A huge volume of data is being generated continuously. Applying data and analytics to make sense of employees’ conversations on social engagement platforms and using analytics and workforce science to identify top talent, deepen employee engagement and manage transformational change are useful for organisations. Providing differentiated client experiences is also included within the ambit of creating a smarter workforce. An organisation with analytical capabilities sees a direct correlation with reduction in time and cost invested in managing employees, as well as faster decision making and hence, increased ROI.

Which HR areas are covered in IBM Smarter Workforce solution?

The science behind Smarter Workforce is to drive measurable business outcomes by integrating talent, culture and work. Under this solution, a major emphasis is towards nurturing and engaging the right talent across the talent life-cycle:

• Talent  Acquisition: Attracting & acquiring the right candidates for the right role by  applying solutions across Employer Branding, Assessment  Methods, Applicant Tracking Systems and Social On-boarding Solutions

• Talent Leadership and Engagement: Connecting the power of a highly engaged and fully enabled workforce with leaders aligned to critical roles through leadership assessments and employee engagement solutions

• Talent  optimisation:  Rapidly  developing,  deploying and optimising workforce   skills   and   capabilities,  while  capitalising  on  an inter-connected  social and collaborative workforce through solutions like Enterprise Social Software, Performance Management & Succession Planning

• Talent Recognition and Rewards Optimising the way employees are recognised and rewarded, thus driving engagement

• Talent  Analytics: Capabilities for developing speed in talent decision making systems by applying descriptive, predictive, prescriptive & cognitive analytics solutions

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Demand for sales, actuarial specialists in Insurance

Demand for sales, actuarial specialists in Insurance

While the insurance industry has good growth prospects it is threatened by a shortage of talent when it needs it the most. According to an industry paper by Mercer, insurance industry growth is to come primarily from emerging markets — mainly China, India and Brazil — as populations of these countries age, the middle classes swell and urban development soars. However, finding the talent to serve these markets is a daunting task.

In a recent TimesJobs.com High Tea chat Saba Adil, talent head, AEGON Religare discussed the job opportunities available in the Indian insurance sector. She said that currently there is huge demand for professionals specialising in sales, operations, finance, underwriting and HR.

Insurance vertical provides many career opportunities for CA professionals as well. Adil added that the current status of low insurance penetration in India coupled with the increasing awareness about insurance products is pointing towards high potential that insurance and banking sector holds for CA professionals. She said that if a CA needs to gain more understanding about the insurance vertical, they can do specialised courses from the Insurance Institute of India and LOMA.

Another key business function that plays a major role in the insurance vertical is IT. Right from providing technology and systems that create customer experience to creating internal efficiencies, the IT team plays a very important role within an insurance company. With many insurance companies investing heavily in IT, Adil believes that a number of opportunities exist for IT and BPM professionals within this vertical.

According to her, profiles most in demand in the insurance sector are sales, actuarial and underwriting. Since actuarial and underwriting business functions are specialist roles and considering that skilled professionals are limited in these areas, there is a huge demand for such domain experts. With insurance companies having multiple channels of distribution, sales professionals continue to be much in demand.

Insurance as an industry vertical is very rewarding with a number of opportunities for learning and growth. Adil explained that the insurance sector offers competitive salaries and variable pay and sales incentives are high for performers.

Insurance is a long term business. To build a successful career in this sector, candidates should build functional and behavioral skills. Most importantly, customer-centric skills should be the key driver of all their business decisions.

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Google offers Rs 1.4 crore pay at BITS-Pilani

Google offers Rs 1.4 crore pay at BITS-Pilani

Technology and e-commerce players have taken the lead over companies in core industries during the campus placements at the Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS)-Pilani. And Google has offered an annual package of Rs 1.40 crore to students selected this year, sources said. The institute hopes to break its last year record of Rs 1.44 crore, offered to one of its students by Facebook.

With companies such as Linkedln, Microsoft, Flipkart, Schlumberger, Goldman Sachs and Amazon also visiting the campus, students eye big offers. All these companies have increased their compensation offer by 5-25%, indicating a better job scenario.

The BITS placement session for 2014 started off with Google, which conducted its first round (written) on August 18 at the Pilani campus. The company’s HR team is slated to visit India in the first week of September.

“A good number of students sat for the first round. We hope that a few of our students will make to the final selection,” said G Balasubramanium, chief placement officer at BITS-Pilani.

This year, 2,300 BITS students are eligible for campus placements — 53 were placed in two days, with the highest domestic package of Rs 23.5 lakh. Microsoft and Schlumberger have also shortlisted students. Both have offered more than Rs 70-lakh annual package to BITS students.

Overall, BITS has placed 150 students at its three centres — Pilani, Goa and Hyderabad. In Goa and Hyderabad, the placement session started on August 13. Facebook, which visited BITS for three consecutive years till last year and offered the highest package in 2013, is not scheduled to visit the campus this year.

The placement officer admitted that attracting these big companies wouldn’t have been possible without the support of the alumni who have a wide network among companies. The institute is confident that by the end of April 2015, 100% students will get placements.

A few students have shown interest in public sector undertakings (PSUs) due to revised pay grades.

Many students here have opted out of placement session to open their own startups. Balasubramanium said among those who opted out of placement sessions, 10 have already started their companies, mostly in IT and communication.

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GEA to axe about 1,000 jobs in restructuring

GEA to axe about 1,000 jobs in restructuring

GEA Group, the German industrial machinery and process engineering group, said planned restructuring would include about 1,000 job cuts over the next two to three years.

“However, the exact number of adjustments, the timeline and affected locations are subject to further analyses,” it said in a statement on Thursday.

The group had announced plans late on Wednesday to reorganise its operational activities to save at least 100 million euros ($132 million) a year by the end of 2017.

At the end of June, GEA had just over 18,000 employees around the world, according to its most recent financial report.

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Telecom demands niche technology specialists

Telecom demands niche technology specialists

In an exclusive interaction, Rajeev Batra, CIO, MTS India talks about the tech specialisations in demand in the telecom vertical 

Within the telecom industry there are two kinds of IT systems. One is the customer facing IT system which forms the backbone of the entire telecom business and is leveraged to provide various voice and data services to subscribers. The other is the internal IT team which caters to the needs of the employees and the entire workforce.

The telecom industry requires two distinct IT systems to run its business which reveals that the kind of tech skills diversity required within the telecom service providers is much higher, compared to other industries.

Gap between demand and supply

Though this means there is a huge opportunity for IT professionals within the telecom vertical, the skills required are quite specific. Specialised training in these areas is not very easily available in the form of a course or certification.

“Tech specialisations required within telecom vertical are niche and hence off-the-shelf-training modules are usually not available. In general, these skills are specialised, which may be acquired through hands-on experience or related trainings conducted by OEMs/ISVs,” said Rajeev Batra, CIO, MTS India.

This is one of the reasons why telecom companies face a challenge when looking to hire IT professionals who are domain specialists in such niche areas. Many times, techies interested to work within the Telecom industry are not aware of the kind of IT specialisations in demand within this industry.

Rajeev Batra, CIO, MTS India sheds light on this and talks about the kind of skill-sets in demand in Telecom.

Key tech skills in demand within customer facing IT teams

For IT professionals who want to work in the customer facing IT systems, there is a need to work with the core telecom apps encompassed in BSS (Business Support Systems), OSS (Operations Support Systems), VAS and others. For this, the techies must have skills and experience in applications that enable business processes and operational functionality.

For example, they should have exposure of:

• Telecom billing and CRM
• Mobile number portability
• Revenue assurance
• Fraud management
• Over the air functionality
• Business analytics
• Campaign management
• Churn management
• Customer self-care
• Regulatory and compliance prescribed systems (legal intercept, DND, second-consent etc)
• Decision support systems
• Supply chain management and stock management
• Lead management, call centre technologies
• IT services management

Essential domain knowledge for employee facing internal IT teams

Internal IT teams focus on building a robust IT support system for everyday functioning of the business. Their primary service target is the employees.

The key areas where team members of the internal IT team of a telecom company should have exposure are:

• ERP – financials and HR
• Collaboration and messaging
• Intranet and intranet portals
• Information security
• Data centers and IT Infrastructure

Movement of IT professionals from technical to managerial roles

While technical certification is relevant for projects, development or operations profiles; for managerial roles expertise in general management and soft skills are more relevant. Mostly IT personnel within telecom industry are engineering graduates and a sizeable percentage of them also have MBA qualification. Most of the time, this is sufficient to take up the challenge of a managerial position.

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Hospitality skills sought after in healthcare

Hospitality skills sought after in healthcare

The Healthcare industry is currently evolving into a patient-centric model that aims at improving the patient’s overall experience within the hospital. This is leading to an increase in demand for hospitality professionals with an expertise in operations and service excellence

In the last few years, Indian hospitals have been trying to position themselves globally as leaders in health systems and patient care. However to meet global standards, they also need to deliver high levels of customer service, for this hospitals need to champion a service culture focussed on patients.

In a recent TimeJobs.com High Tea chat session Jacob Jacob, chief people officer of Apollo Hospitals Enterprises Ltd said that within the Indian healthcare industry there is an increase in demand for experts in operations and service excellence functions. The reason being, healthcare industry is currently orienting itself into a total patient-centric model that aims at improving patient’s overall experience.

“Hospitality professionals are increasingly finding relevance within healthcare vertical as service excellence is equally important in both healthcare and hospitality verticals. For professionals with more than 14-15 years of experience, there is an increasing opportunity in support level roles within the industry,” said Jacob.

Another role that has big potential in the Healthcare industry is clinical research, with most of the institutions focusing on creating a dedicated division for this area. This directly points towards job openings for a variety of professionals connected with clinical research, in various capacities.

Hinting at the potential job opportunities that the healthcare industry would be throwing open in the coming times, Jacob said that most of the hospitals are planning expansions which would consequently create more job opportunities for support functions as well as core functions going forward.

According to the latest RecruiteX report (Jan-Jun 2014), the key takeaways for the Healthcare/Pharma industry are:

• Expansion into the high potential rural and peri-urban markets

• Specialisation and capabilities led hires, focused to increase efficiency across the value chain, and increase services accessibility.

• Focus on leadership competencies as they are most critical for success in pharmaceutical organisations

• The industry seems to be planning expansions in tier II and III cities and is looking for senior level recruits who can handle these units

• With companies planning to expand their networks, demand for support functions is expected to be high

• Industry needs to work on cost effective solutions to grow

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