Case Library initiated by The Economi c Times For more insightful case studies rooted in the Indian context, log on to www.etcases.com Enigma Systems ERP Selection Process: Getting it Right the First Time It had been a good eight years with Enigma Systems and Abhay Kishore had tried his best to en- sure that the information technol- ogy (IT) department he led drove all critical business operations effortlessly to stay at the forefront of evolving technologies. However, many a time, his strategy to go for the best systems for individual departments had created multiple challenges. Not only were the systems sluggish, but the data crunching and responses were showing signs of breakdown. Kishore was well aware that the biggest challenge for his department was that the systems were not linked to each other. Kishore recollected a recent dis- cussion he had with Dr Banerjee, an ERP consultant. It helped him under- stand that an ERP system was one of the best solutions for Enigma. After a series of meetings, Kishore managed approvals from Enigma’s senior management and started working on the blueprint of choos- ing the best-suited ERP solution for Enigma. He formed a core team who would partner with the consultants of the consulting firm. The steering committee also ratified the decision taken. Kishore was wondering whether he should be happy about what he had achieved or worried about what was in store. Did he deserve a break or was it time for Dr Banerjee to aid him in this ERP implemen- tation journey? ARNAB BANERJEE, Principal Consultant, Enterprise Application Services- Oracle Supply Chain Competency Group, Infosys VIJAY KUMAR DHARMADHIKARI, Deputy General Manager, Nicolas Correa, Pune Household Help Domestic Helps – The Oligopolists Revathi, a busy homemaker, was on the lookout for domestic help. Initially, she had approached Rajitha, who quoted a very high salary. She then tried talking to other domestic helps in her apart- ment complex, who demanded a similar salary. Revathi surrendered and hired Rajitha, who clung to the motto, ‘Not a penny more, not a penny less’. For the first few months the home functioned smoothly and then mat- ters got complicated. Rajitha was frequently absent from work, sometimes with and many a times without intimation. Revathi was annoyed with Rajitha’s careless at- titude and at the first available op- portunity, asked Rajitha to leave. However, Revathi was in for a shock as the other domestic helps refused to work for her. She tried contacting at least 10 different people. At about the same time, Revathi’s best friends in the com- plex, Dhanushree and Vimala too asked their domestic helps to leave for similar reasons and were on a quest for domestic help. All the three friends were in for a shock when they came to know that the domestic helps working in one apartment do not work in other apart- ments, unless there is ‘mutual consent’. On hearing this, Revathi’s husband, Rajesh, an economist, blurted out, “Oh! Oligopoly, a cartel, collusion.” What did he mean? RAJESH GANGAKHEDKAR, Assistant Professor, Institute of Public Enterprise, Hyderabad RK MISHRA, Director, Institute of Public Enterprise, Hyderabad Arnab Banerjee Vijay Kumar Dharmadhikari RK Mishra
New Delhi: India’s rapidly growing ecommerce companies and startups are planning to recruit aggressively from the top engineering institutes this year as demand for talent soars. Flipkart, Snapdeal, Quikr, Urban Ladder, PepperTap, CultureAlley and others are readying lucrative offers to woo students at IITs, NITs and other institutes.
Flipkart, India’s biggest online re-tailer, plans to double the headcount of its technology team to 2,400 engineers. Online marketplace Snapdeal is also looking to double the strength of its tech team to about 2,000 this year.
About 10% of IIT students had joined such companies last year, ac-cording to ET estimates. The pro-portion may grow substantially this time round, placement teams at some of the IITs said.
Bengaluru-based Flipkart is plan-ning to roll out attractive compensa-tion and benefits for the new cam-pus hires. “We are not limiting ourselves to any fixed number for campus hiring. We are rearing to go and will be aggressive at the tech, B-school and logistics campuses,” said Dalbir Singh, senior director-human resources at Flipkart. “We will attract talent by selling them the opportunity to work with an ecommerce leader that will im-pact a larger audience.”
Delhi-based Snapdeal plans to visit more campuses this year than it did last time round. “We will rely heavily on the campus-es for fresh talent as this will help widen our base of tech team,” said Saurabh Nigam, vice president — HR.
Rajiv Srivatsa, chief oper-ating officer and co-founder of Urban Ladder, Bengaluru-based curated online furniture seller, said the startup plans to visit campuses earlier this year
than it did last time round.Startups such as Quikr and
CultureAlley are also planning to reach campuses ahead of the others, with new strategies to get the best catch. Usually, companies head to the campuses around October every year.
“Technology is where the rubber meets the road and ideas become re-ality. As technology is so integral to us, this year we will try to be ahead of
others in tapping the top campus tal-ent,” said Dhruv Dubey, vice presi-dent — HR at Quikr. The Mumbai-based online and mobile classifieds portal is organising hackathons at campuses this year. It is also eyeing participation in guest lectures and leadership series sessions.
IITs in Delhi and Mumbai, in par-ticular, are expecting many more ecommerce firms including startups
to visit the campuses this year. A stu-dent in charge of placement at IIT Bombay said, “The interest level among students to join startups is growing at IIT Bombay and the type of roles and work atmosphere of-fered by the startups is getting more compelling for students to join.”
Online grocer PepperTap’s CEO Navneet Singh said he is planning to visit campuses himself to pitch for talent on behalf of the company. “I will go to the top IITs and talk about the company and the culture that boosts fun and flexibility,” he said. PepperTap is looking to add about 60 engineers this year.
At the National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli, start-ups are evincing greater interest than ever in recruiting students while the students too are looking at such offers favourably, said director Srinivasan Sundarrajan. “Startups are engaging with our students through the alumni and Facebook route. We see many more students joining the ecom-merce space this year,” he said.
Snapdeal as well as Jaipur-based CultureAlley, which is also sticking to top-tier institutes for fresh talent, are eyeing the summer internship to fill the talent pool.
“We are looking to hire sum-mer interns and convert
as many as possi-ble into full-time employees,” said
N i g a m o f Snapdeal.
The company is also planning
to organise c o m p e t i -
tions and case study sessions be-fore final placements. “Our focus is to secure the first slots on campus-es,” said Nigam.
Engaging students at an early stage is fast becoming the norm at ecom-merce companies. Urban Ladder, like many others, is also set to introduce engagement activities. In addition, it plans to visit a few international cam-puses this year to attract talent in the design domain.
Pepperfry, on the other hand, plans to hire young designers graduating from Indian and overseas institutes. “We are looking within the country and outside to add to our pool of de-signers,” said Ashish Shah, chief op-erating officer and founder of the Mumbai-based furniture and home online marketplace.
Ecomm Firms Queue up at Top Engg InstitutesFlipkart, Snapdeal to double tech team strength; startups set to visit campuses earlier than usual
Research Outfits Need to Draw Talent A high demand for grad-uating engineers from IIT and NIT, particularly by startups and ecommerce companies, should ring alarm bells for R&D insti-tutions and industry out-fits. Innovation is the key to high growth. Re-search institutions and outfits need to attract the best minds. To that end, they must recruit engineering graduates with the same zeal, pro-viding students with competitive options. Re-search must not become the last resort.
VIEW
Flipkart is planning
to roll out attractive compensation and benefi ts for the new campus hires
Quikr organising
hackathons at campuses this year. It is also eyeing participation in guest lectures and leadership series sessions
Students at
IITs and NITs are more willing to join startups as compared to last year
Urban Ladder also
plans to visit a few international campuses this year to attract talent in the design domain
Pepperfry
plans to hire young designers graduating from both Indian and overseas institutes
Snapdeal plans
to visit more campuses this year than it did last time round
Urban Ladder, Quikr,
PepperTap and CultureAlley to visit campuses earlier this year as compared to last year
Bengaluru: After makingchanges to its maternity leavepolicy and rolling out a compre-hensive adoption assistance pro-gramme for employees, India’sbiggest ecommerce firm Flipkarthas unveiled a slew of initiativesaimed at helping staff to be mostproductive while going throughcrucial life events.
The Bengaluru-based company— which is part of the unicornclub — has made changes to its ex-isting leave policy, allowing em-ployees greater flexibility to bal-ance workplace pressure andpersonal demands.
Under the new policy, employeeswill be able to take one to sixmonths’ unpaid time away fromwork as a career break. “This is toallow employees the chance to bal-ance their careers with other com-mitments, responsibilities and in-terests, and will be applicable forthose who have spent a minimumof two years with us,” said MekinMaheshwari, chief people officer.Marriage leave has also been rolledout, and five days will be availablefor employees to free up their timefor wedding ceremonies.
Unlimited bereavement leavehas also been granted to employ-ees to grieve, recover, and get backon their feet after the loss of a fam-ily member. This apart, Flipkartemployees will have the opportu-nity to avail one day of specialleave annually to enjoy a birthdayor anniversary. These new addi-tions to the leave policy are overand above the regular number ofdays allowed for casual/sick leave(12 days), annual leave (18 days),and declared holidays.
“All our policies are aimed at cre-ating a workplace that’s inspiring,we want to enable our employees tobe able to show maximum produc-tivity at work,” said Maheshwari.
Now, employees will also havethe option of taking free guid-ance from professional consult-ants as part of the new employeeassistance programme. Face-to-face and telephonic counselling,hotlines, emergency support --they’re all available for employ-ees needing guidance on maritaland family issues, career develop-ment, work and life stress, legaland financial problems.
Flipkart has also rolled out anew travel policy under which allemployees will be eligible forbusiness class travel during offi-cial work if the flight duration isof more than six hours. This is ap-plicable not just to vice-presi-dents but for staff across all lev-els, even people who are travellingfor a Flipkart interview.
Umesh Belludi, CEO at Brain-Tree HR Consulting, welcomedFlipkart’s move, defining it as a“progressive step towards build-ing employees’ loyalty to the com-pany”. “Such innovative HR poli-cies — inspired in a large part byglobal best practices — ensure thatemployees feel a closer affinity tothe workplace, and that seniormanagement can in turn think ofthem as family.”
Giving employees the option totake time away from work allowsa “better psychological fitment”.“Employees need flexibility,which is the major trend of the fu-ture,” he said. “Such policies go along way in giving employees pre-cisely that.”
Flipkart Pushesfor Balance withNew Leave Policy
Career Break:
Employees who have been with the fi rm for
a minimum of two years can take 1-6 months unpaid time away from work to take care of other responsibilities and commitments
Bereavement leave:
Unlimited time is available to employees
to grieve for the loss of a loved one in the family
New Delhi: Diversity is the next big thing onSnapdeal’s to-do list as the Delhi-based onlinemarketplace seeks to attract and retain talent.It has launched a special drive to recruit re-turning women and women with specialneeds, along with rolling out a number of ini-tiatives for employees who are parents.
The company is creating an ecosystem to re-tain existing talent and attract fresh talent,said Saurabh Nigam, vice president — humanresources at Snapdeal. “Apart from hiringdrives, we are rolling out policies that willtake care of needs of our existing employees,”he said.ET had earlier reported that most of India’s
ecommerce companies, including the biggestonline retailer Flipkart, have very few womenemployees, especially in leadership positions.At Snapdeal, Vani Kola, the director of Kalaa-ri Capital, is the only woman on the company’sboard.
Snapdeal has named its diversity initiativeas ‘Advitya’ (meaning unique), through whichit plans to build a culture where diversity ingender and physical abilities is appreciated byall employees.
“Embracing diversity within the team is crit-ical for our evolution and is a reflection of ourvision of building an inclusive platform as weprogress and grow,” said Kunal Bahl, co-foun-der and CEO of Snapdeal.
As part of this hiring drive, two women withspecial needs have joined Snapdeal. “Otherswill join in the next few weeks,” said Nigam.
Snapdeal is running these drives for peoplewith special needs in association with Benga-luru-based charitable trust EnAble India. Ithas sought help of another organisation, In-ner Sight, to hold sessions for managers to sen-sitise them on diversity and ‘women returnee-ship programme’ in partnership with Jobs forHer, a job portal for women.
Snapdeal is running a three-month curatedprogramme for women who have been on along career break and are restarting their ca-reers.
“During these three months Snapdeal willtrain them in newer developments in their ar-ea of work, helping them adjust to the changein lifestyle,” said Nigam.
The company has also introduced adoptionbenefits for male employees who can avail ofthree weeks of leave while female employeescan take leave up to 12 weeks after adopting achild. The company has also enhanced its ma-ternity leave from 16 weeks to 25 weeks and pa-ternity leave from two weeks to three weeks. Inaddition, new mothers can choose to workfrom home for two months.
Snapdeal Kicksoff DiversityInitiatives
ALL-INCLUSIVE
The firm has launched adrive to recruit return-ing women and
women with special needs, along with initiatives for employees who are parents
Case Library initiated by The Economic Times
For more insightful case studies rooted in the Indian context, log on to www.etcases.com
Enigma Systems
ERP Selection Process:Getting it Right the First TimeIt had been a good eight years with Enigma Systems and Abhay Kishore had tried his best to en-sure that the information technol-ogy (IT) department he led drove all critical business operations effortlessly to stay at the forefront of evolving technologies.
However, many a time, his strategy to go for the best systems for individual departments had created multiple challenges. Not only were the systems sluggish, but the data crunching and responses were showing signs of breakdown.
Kishore was well aware that the biggest challenge for his department was that the systems were not linked to each other.
Kishore recollected a recent dis-cussion he had with Dr Banerjee, an ERP consultant. It helped him under-stand that an ERP system was one of the best solutions for Enigma.
After a series of meetings, Kishore managed approvals from Enigma’s senior management and started working on the blueprint of choos-ing the best-suited ERP solution for Enigma. He formed a core team who would partner with the consultants
of the consulting firm. The steering committee also ratified the decision taken.Kishore was wondering whether he should be happy about what he had achieved or worried about what was in store. Did he deserve a break or was it time for Dr Banerjee to aid him in this ERP implemen-tation journey?
Domestic Helps – The OligopolistsRevathi, a busy homemaker, was on the lookout for domestic help. Initially, she had approached Rajitha, who quoted a very high salary. She then tried talking to other domestic helps in her apart-ment complex, who demanded a similar salary. Revathi surrendered and hired Rajitha, who clung to the motto, ‘Not a penny more, not a penny less’.
For the first few months the home functioned smoothly and then mat-ters got complicated. Rajitha was frequently absent from work, sometimes with and many a times without intimation. Revathi was annoyed with Rajitha’s careless at-titude and at the first available op-portunity, asked Rajitha to leave.
However, Revathi was in for a shock as the other domestic helps refused to work for her. She tried contacting at least 10 different
people. At about the same time, Revathi’s best friends in the com-plex, Dhanushree and Vimala too asked their domestic helps to leave for similar reasons and were on a quest for domestic help.
All the three friends were in for a shock when they came to know that the domestic helps working
in one apartment do not work in other apart-ments, unless there is ‘mutual consent’.
On hearing this, Revathi’s husband, Rajesh, an economist, blurted out, “Oh!
Oligopoly, a cartel, collusion.” What did he mean?
RAJESH GANGAKHEDKAR,
Assistant Professor, Institute of Public Enterprise, Hyderabad
RK MISHRA, Director, Institute of Public Enterprise, Hyderabad
Arnab Banerjee
Vijay Kumar Dharmadhikari
RK Mishra
10�THE ECONOMIC TIMES | MUMBAI | TUESDAY | 4 AUGUST 2015Career & Business Life
