8 THE ECONOMIC TIMES | NEW DELHI | TUESDAY | 26 APRIL 2016 Careers: The Fast Track WAYS TO Having to deal with an overly control- ling boss is a common peeve. Some- one who doesn’t trust your profes- sional strengths can be frustrating and even demotivating. If you have a boss who pays too much attention to the minutest of tasks, demands progress reports too frequently or even ques- tions the number of breaks you take, you have a micromanager on your hands. Brinda Dasgupta brings you some tips from experts. 4 Demonstrate Sincerity Be sure to show yourself as an employee who does not require mi- cromanagement — best done by following processes and respecting protocol. “Be hands on with tasks, jot down activities in your diary, work email and mobile phone - these will cement your tag as a dedi- cated team member,” said RP Yadav, CMD, Genius Consultants. 5 Give Feedback Don’t let yourself be micromanaged till you reach a breaking point and feel like you want to quit your job. Gather up some courage and speak to your boss, taking care to frame your points well. “Have a positive attitude, and offer reassurance that you can do the work without being constantly supervised,” said Mishra. Deal With a Micromanaging Boss 3 Be Clear About Your Deliverables A common cause for a boss micromanaging team members is the fear of not getting the right amount of work done, that projects may be delayed, or that the quality is not up to mark. “Be very clear on what your boss expects from you, to ensure that there is no discrep- ancy with what you consider your deliverables,” said Padmanabhan. Show Empathy 1 Understand the context your manager is operating in—he or she may be under pressure from superiors, causing a tendency to micromanage your work. “Soothe irritation and frustration and try to understand what your boss is going through. Keep communication lines open and don’t judge too harshly. Instead, view the situation through a lens of em- pathy,” said Aditya Narayan Mishra, CEO, CIEL HR Services. Give Frequent Updates 2 Your boss is constantly checking on you and the progress of the project because of a fear that you won’t be able to deliver. “Alleviate these concerns by giving frequent updates,” said Murali Padmanab- han, senior vice president - HR, talent management head India, Vir- tusaPolaris. “Talk regularly about your daily tasks, and apprise him or her about the progress. This will build trust in you and show you are more than capable of delivering outcomes.” Prachi.Verma@timesgroup.com New Delhi: Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta has won the European Founda- tion for Management Develop- ment Quality Improvement System or EQUIS accredita- tion. It is the first business school in India to be accredi- ted by all three major accredi- tation agencies in the world. EQUIS board voted to confer accreditation on IIM Calcutta on April 12. IIMC already had accreditation from The Ad- vance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), Florida and the London-based Associ- ation of MBAs or AMBA. “Triple crown accreditation has put us on a different level internationally. We expect to fare better in not only global rankings but also as a strong contender for attracting glo- bal talent,” IIMC director Sai- bal Chattopad- hyay told ET. Only five other B-schools in Asia and 73 in the world are triple accredi- ted. The UK has the highest number of tri- ple accredited B-schools, at about 20. IIMC is also the only Indian mem- ber of CEMS, a grouping of 30 premier global business scho- ols that offer the Masters in Management programme. IIMC Wins EQUIS Accreditation; First B-school in India to Bag ‘Triple Crown’ Only 5 other B-schools in Asia and 73 globally are triple accredited Varuni.Khosla@timesgroup. com New Delhi: Away from regulators, a new industry has risen to make ban- king easier for customers. And, this sunrise sector — financial technolo- gy, or fintech — is attracting hoards of top talent from across industries. Last week, Flipkart made two high- profile hires for its fintech business, while, in the recent months, Paytm roped in PwC’s Shinjini Kumar to be chief executive of its yet-to-launch payments bank. It also named Krish- na Hegde, a top executive of Barcla- ys, to head the company’s consumer investment products division for the payments bank and Vipin Surelia, a former deputy general manager at Reserve Bank of India, to its leaders- hip team. Globally, Anshu Jain, De- utsche Bank’s former co-CEO, is said to be joining US company SoFi. Bengaluru-based Scripbox CEO Ashok Kumar has come from Cisco. Arjun Ramnath, senior product ma- nager, previously held the same posi- tion at LinkedIn, California. Fintech is an umbrella term that co- vers technology-based companies operating in insurance, payment, as- set management, etc. With it trans- forming banking business as we know it and disrupting mammoth banks, headhunters see a greater shift of talent towards it. “Finance technology is a booming segment in India with the opening of numerous mobile wallet companies, non-ban- king financing companies and now payments banks — all running on ro- bust digital platforms,” said AG Rao, group managing director of Manpo- werGroup India. The segment is ge- nerating a lot of new jobs, most clus- tered around mobile, user experien- ce and financial analysis, he said. In Scripbox with 80 employees, av- erage age is 27 and average leaders- hip age is 34. For both Kumar and Ramnath, motivation to move from big name firms to a fintech startup was simple: similarities between them and the startup’s founders. lume customers, the likes of Mobik- wik, Capital Float, MSwipe, Citrus Pay and Ezetap have raised $150 mil- lion-plus in India. For young employ- ees, they come with a promise of stock options and open work culture. “Considering this is a newly evol- ved industry, it will see at least a 20% increase in hiring due to new e-wal- lets and payments banks. It will be due to large scale of business (ecom- merce) and financials going online," explained Ajay Shah, assistant vice president at Teamlease Services. Meanwhile, BFSI sector is also stepping up recruitment of highly talented IT professionals, especially those with an understanding of fi- nance. “It is to be seen is whether the BFSI sector will acqui-hire FinTech firms or will the ‘new kids on the block’ swallow up the BFSI incum- bents,” said Vivek Madhukar, chief operating officer at TimesJobs.com. For BFSI companies that have been practicing traditional ways of physi- cal banking, fintech will give access to 300 million new customers (Inter- net and smartphone users). “Earlier, something as basic as booking a taxi would involve cash transactions and even that’s completely moving online via products like mobile wallets,” said Alka Dingra, assistant general mana- ger, Teamlease Services. BFSI VS FINTECH Talent drain is a very real problem for BFSI sector to fintech domain, and it is only going to increase in the coming months, Rao of ManPower- Group said. “Companies are stating the fact that they go head-to-head when it comes to technology talent.” There is no doubt investment banks and fintech companies are locked in a war for the best technolo- gy talent, desperate to invest in IT to keep up with the digital revolution. In this sense, technology is impres- sively advanced in financial servi- ces, which are both an opportunity and a threat for banks," he added. YOUNG EMPLOYEES Today, over half the employers loo- king to hire want employees with just two years of work experience, shows a data point from TimesJobs. MasterCard, a traditional financi- al services company that manages global payments, says 80% of its cur- rent workforce in India is millenni- al. "There's a big technology story in India, we're creating a diverse orga- nisational culture world over with 40% millennials in our workforce. But in India, that figure is double as we are hiring many more individu- als in their early careers,” chief ta- lent officer David Deacon told ET. FUTURE OF FINTECH In India, fintech is synonymous with just payment technology, even as the- re are 11lending fintech unicorns glo- bally. The sector is expected to ex- pand here as well, say experts, cove- ring hitherto untapped areas such as lending and personal finance. WHY FINTECH? With more than 117 million Indians using smartphones and over 160 mil- lion connected to the Internet, a lar- ge number of companies have been coming up with products to assist customers. A lot of that is happening in financial sector where technology is developing at a rapid rate, disrup- ting traditional banking. Industry experts predict that professionals with deep domain and design know- ledge will be in great demand. Premised on low-cost, high-tech mo- dels to deal with low-value, high-vo- Fintech Sector Proving to Be Talent Magnet MEN AT WORK TOP FUNCTIONAL AREA EXPERIENCE IT/Telecom - Software 0-2 years 2-5 5-7 7-10 Sales/Business Development Finance Corporate Planning/Consulting Top Management 51% 28% 11 4 56 16 11 4 4 TOP INDUSTRY Financial Services/Stockbroking IT-Software Software services Banking Internet/Dotcom/ISP 26% 17 15 13 9 COS HIRING IN INDIA: IT players ∙Fiserv India ∙KPMG India ∙Banks ∙UBS ∙Citibank India ∙Startups ∙Faircent ∙WRS Info India Pvt Ltd ∙Karza Technologies ∙Trumoney ∙Fintech Stealth ∙Impact Guru ∙Stealth Mode Fintech Startup ∙Trupay ∙Capsurge Financial technology is disrupting the traditional way of banking and leading to a considerable talent drain from BFSI sector Sreeradha D Basu & Devina Sengupta Mumbai: Startups in India are no longer rushing to splurge up to $700,000 a year on executives from abroad. The number of such offers has dried up as much as 60-70% in the past few months, according to headhunters, who said the drive to contain costs has forced startups to rely mainly on local talent for filling senior positions. The cutback has been the sharpest at bigger firms such as Flipkart, Snapdeal and Zo- mato, headhunters said. ET spoke to more than eight hiring firms including RGF Executive Se- arch, Longhouse Consulting, EMA Partners, Transearch, The Head Hunters, Michael Page India, Heid- rick & Struggles and Basil Advisors. “A company that would hire seven- eight (executives) from abroad has slashed its hiring to two-three at the most,” said Anshuman Das, mana- ging partner of search firm Long- house Consulting, which speciali- ses in e-commerce recruitment. Gone are the days, Das said, when bigger e-commerce players would hire even vice presidents for . `1-1.5 crore plus stock options that would be worth another . `1crore a year. “There was a lot of noise on e-com- merce companies hiring from abro- ad and though not all were success- ful, at least they were entertained. Now even for that entertainment there is no money,” he said. The shift is also because investors want companies to focus on unit economics and not products as was the case earlier. Therefore, demand for technology specialists has come down, recruiters said. “A couple of years ago, one expected e-commerce in India to grow the same way that it did in the West. Firms hired those who have been part of the growth in the West. However, that growth did not happen in India and therefore the global recruitments had to be stopped,” said Vinod Murali, mana- ging director of InnoVen Capital In- dia, a venture capital debt fund. At another executive search firm, The Head Hunters, CEO Kris Lakshmikanth, who was making three trips to the US till last year to recruit talent, said firms have clam- ped down on such hiring. “The odd at $5-6 million annual packages. Punit Soni, chief product officer of Flipkart quit earlier this month. Pe- eyush Ranjan and Saikiran Krish- namurthy, two other high-profile executives recruited from abroad still with Flipkart and have been as- signed additional responsibilities. Flipkart declined to comment on emailed queries from ET. The shift has led to grooming of more local executives who can take up senior posts. In case of recruit- ments from abroad, employers are now looking at people with lower ex- perience levels and therefore lower salaries as well. Nilay Khandelwal, regional director at Michael Page India said the younger startups and e-commerce firms still prefer their top candidates from the Bay Area but are now increasingly hiring on contracts which can be renewed at the employer’s discretion. There are reports of job cuts, re- sulting from the rapid automation being introduced at leading star- tups to handle routine tasks. In the backdrop of this slump, big-ticket recruitments are being avoided. Basil Advisors’ founder Prateek Srivastava said hiring decisions are being deferred and time taken to clo- se a hire stretched. In a few cases, he said, executives from abroad have been hired on contracts stipulating a certain number of hours per we- ek, where they are allowed to work for other employers as well. Geetika Mehta, director-human resources at Urban Ladder said, “We hire candidates based on fit- ment of skill sets from a role and culture perspective. In the last few months, we have not seen any talent from global markets relevant for us. However, a number of employees in our tech team are from Bay area.” Employee costs at leading startups account for about 35% of overall cash burn rates, say industry ana- lysts. Instead of enticing with mo- ney and growth, clients are now as- king the search firms to bring in on- ly those who are keen to return to In- dia anyway, said GC Jayaprakash, executive director at RGF Executive Search. Recently, when a potential hire from the Silicon Valley said he would think about relocating if the offer was exciting enough, the com- pany told RGF to let go of the chase. one that happens now, clients want within $200,000. The best talent is way beyond the budgets in today’s e- commerce scenario,” he said. Such executives were earlier hired at highs of $600,000-700,000 and mo- re, including ESOPs. Earlier, Laksh- mikanth said, the founder of a big e- commerce firm would ask him to shortlist at least half a dozen candi- dates from Google and Amazon’s US offices for his key team. Now such demands have dried up, he said. Just a year ago, startups in India were offering matching dollar sala- ries and fast-track career opportu- nities to lure talent from the Silicon Valley. An ET story in 2015 had high- lighted how two of Google’s engine- ering vice-presidents–Peeyush Ran- jan and Punit Soni – relocated from San Francisco Bay Area to Flipkart Thrifty Indian Startups Eye Local Talent End of Ecommerce Boom Startups are scaling back on search for global talent Bigger cos such as Flipkart, Snapdeal are cutting back most Headhunters say offers are down 60-70% as cos cut costs Those hiring for senior roles, are looking for options in India They are also open to get in people with less experience at lower cost Alternative is global talent on a much tighter budget This is compared to as much as $600,000- 700,000 earlier $ $ For international recruitments, there is more of contract hiring “When the e-commerce firms started, they hired from abroad to show they were big, but now that will not happen” Arun Das Mahapatra, partner in-charge of Heidrick & Struggles in India Home i s Best The days of extravagant offers for global talent are gone as cos come under pressure to tighten purse strings