With the onset of the pandemic, more and more companies moved to a remote setup to keep their operations up and running. The switch, however, made companies realize that a large chunk of their operations could actually operate well out of the traditional office spaces. In fact, 75% of CFOs across the world agreed to shift at least 5% of their employees to a WFH model for the long-term.
In addition to that, almost every major industry giant has hinted towards incorporating a work-from-home arrangement in their operations. I remember it was around May that Twitter said that its employees could work from home “forever” if they wish, irrespective of the pandemic.
Even Facebook had joined the bandwagon and declared that eligible employees could request a permanent remote-work arrangement. Not just that, Zuckerberg himself had shared that he anticipates that about 50 percent of Facebook’s workforce will work remotely in the next five to ten years.
Undeniably, a trend has been set in motion–a trend of increasing acceptance towards remote. That’s because people are realizing that remote work gives them more flexibility of operations, greater access to talent, and considerable cost-saving.
As a spectator, witnessing this trend unfold, I couldn’t help but think that if an increasing number of companies become open to hiring globally, and setting up distributed teams, what would be their go-to choice? I realized that for engineering talent, India would soon become an attractive market that companies would reach out to, now more than ever.
India: An engineering talent hub
It’s no news that India has been a country of choice for MNCs planning to set their global tech centers. The country now has the biggest global presence of MNC tech centers, employing 10 lakh people across 1250 MNCs. But now, India is a preferred resource hub for young companies and startups, looking to expand.
Only last year, we saw startups like Gojek, Grab, etc setting up their development centres in India and many others have followed pursuit. After all, it’s a wise choice, right?
First, there’s the quality of talent that’s unmatched in India. For example, Illustrator, Acrobat, Indesign, some of Adobe’s best products are developed and managed entirely out of India. Not just that, the car systems in Fiat, Volkswagen, Tata Motors, GM, Hyundai, and Chrysler have a user-friendly software architecture built by local Indian engineers at Harman’s India research center. I could go on but the crux remains the same- Indian engineering talent has unparalleled skills.
Then, there’s an abundance of talent. India produces 1.5 million engineers into the job market every year, according to the HRD ministry. At the moment, companies need critical dev skills at scale. And India offers that.
And these factors have gotten a boost with initiatives like Startup India and Make in India and further have brought India up the ladder of choice for companies looking to set up remote engineering teams, especially startups.
However, all said and done, I couldn’t ignore the fact that setting up a remote team would not be a piece of cake, especially for young companies that have everything from building products to managing funding on their plate.
The challenge: building a remote team
To embrace the remote culture for startups to be established in India – specially in CyberHub/Cyber cities – Bengaluru, Pune or Hyderabad – is no longer as simple as it was earlier right? Let me break this down for you.
First and foremost, as a startup, you’d need brand visibility in a country that may or may not know much about your product to start with. It is only when you’re known in the developer community in India that you can reach out to the premium talent here.
Next, you need to filter out the right match for your team. Working in a startup environment, and that too remotely is not everyone’s cup of tea. So, narrowing people with the right skills is crucial but it is even more important that you find the right cultural fit. To do that, you’d need a dedicated hiring effort along with an understanding of the culture here. This gets even more tricky when you don’t have the liberty of an in-person communication wherein you can judge their body language. Sure, there are video calls but it all needs expertise to evaluate people virtually.
In addition to that, to ensure that people want to join and stay at your company, you’d have to provide them with the right support and benefits. You can no longer set a glass wall office in a high rise building with all the facilities. You need to get those facilities in each and every employees’ homes. For that, you need an understanding of setting up remote infrastructure–from ergonomic workstations to reliable networks. You’ve got to cover all the bases.
Additionally, you need to provide benefits relevant to the employee’s geographical location. This becomes tricky for offshore teams because the legalities around benefits in India would be different from the country your HQ is based out of.
All the while, you’d have a young company to grow. Your hiring and operational expenses would also increase provided you’d not just be adding an engineering team but also an operations head to manage the team.
TeemGenie: Redefining the process for you
After interacting with several leaders planning to set remote teams in India and a lot of research, I realized that shift towards remote work has brought in the need for a partner to offload the responsibility involved in the setup and management of these teams.
I notice that while there were several traditional players in the game, their way of functioning worked well for giants and large corporations looking to expand but did not have the right wavelength to match with young companies.
That’s how the idea of TeemGenie came into play. I thought that I could put my experience of working with several startups in India in building their teams through Workship to use by helping out companies outside of India.
While building TeemGenie, we had one goal–to deliver a complete bundle that provides an end-to-end team-building experience and not smaller chunks of it. To do that, I kept myself in the shoes of an off-shore founder and tried to understand the setup they’d need to build a remote engineering team.
After much introspection, with TeemGenie, I decided to build a three-pillar service for young companies planning to build offshore engineering operations.
- The outreach: Connecting with the developer community through the right channels and with the right message.
- The hiring: Building a remote-first hiring process to filter out the top-notch talent for our partners to choose from.
- The management: Overseeing and managing the team, their operations, benefits, finance and legal.
The idea with TeemGenie is to become partners of young companies to help them focus on building their product while we take care of the team building and management. My vision is to become the most reliable choice for young companies looking to set foot in India for their engineering needs.
Looking forward to building TeemGenie!