ENGINEERING NO MORE SAFE SIDE IN INDIA

Engineering colleges have been springing up like wild mushrooms in India in the last few years. Their number has gone up from a not too modest 1,511 colleges in 2006-07 to an astoundingly high 3,345 in 2014-15. The state of Andhra Pradesh alone has more than 700 colleges.

If these figures are anything to go by, it would be easy to be led into believing that opting for a degree in engineering would be a wise career move in India. The fact, however, remains that 20-33% out of the 1.5 million engineering graduates passing out every year run the risk of not getting a job at all, points out EconomicTimes. For those who do, the entry-level salary is pathetically low, and has stagnated at that level for the last eight-nine years, though the prices of everything from groceries to vehicle fuel have shot up during the same period.

Whether it is the below-par quality of education provided by private colleges or the stagnating (if not shrinking) demand for the number of engineers, the huge number of engineering pass outs – which, incidentally, is more than the total number of engineers produced by the USA and China combined together, face a bleak future.

A large percentage of the ‘fortunate’ ones who do end up getting a job after an engineering degree take up jobs which are well below their technical qualifications, since the supply far outnumbers the demand. They do not get jobs for which they are qualified or ‘suitable’ jobs, which makes the matters worse.

“In that case, there is both unemployment and underemployment,” says E Balaji, former CEO of manpower consulting firm Randstad. “Several engineers end up working as sales executives, so there is no link between what they studied and what they do.”

All the more threatening is the fact that the two key industries which hire engineers in India- the IT and ITes and the manufacturing sector- are also hiring a lesser number of them than before.

The IT industry in India, which grew by as much as 30% up till five years back, has slowed down to a 10.2% growth rate at present. The demand for qualified professionals in the field has understandably gone down too.

The rapid growth in the number of engineering colleges can be attributed to an ecosystem built around feeding the $110 billion outsourcing market and the huge demand for engineers in the IT sector in India itself.

Sadly however, the demand for IT related jobs in India fell sharply due to non-linear growth models of IT companies and lesser number of men required to handle the same jobs as before due to a higher degree of automation.

Making matters worse is the fact that the start-up salary offered to fresh engineering pass outs is expected to stagnate at more or less the same level in the next 3- 5 years, said LiveMint last year. Entry level salary package for a software engineer which has hovered around Rs 2.75 lakh to Rs 3.25 lakh ($4,600- $5,400 per annum) since the last eight-nine years should not, therefore, hope for a turnaround or for better days.

The two biggest recruiters in the IT sector, TCS and Infosys, do not plan to hike their entry level salary for fresh recruits and they are quite clear about it.

“At the moment we are giving campus offers where we have not changed anything as far as the salary component is concerned. It (entry-level salaries) remains stagnant for a while…We are going with the same structure as we have. There is no change. And we are getting good talent,” said Ajoy Mukherjee, global head of human resources, TCS to a leading Indian daily.

TCS, however, will continue to scout the various engineering colleges in its bid to hunt for the best talent in the industry and look forward to hiring 35,000 professionals in 2014-15 as compared to 25,000 the previous year.

A worrying trend that has come to be observed is that not only students from some of the lower rung colleges, but also some of the best brains that cleared the tough entrance tests to reach the 10 exalted Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs).

As against 76% of the 1,389 IIT Mumbai pass outs getting campus placements during the 2011-12 session, only a little above 66% out of the total 1,501 could find campus placements in 2012-13, as per sources.

The situation is grimmer for Tier II and Tier III colleges. The huge disparity betweenstart out salary for top colleges and the not so highly sought after ones, which has already been highly pronounced, is expected to widen further. While average startup salary for an IIT pass out is Rs 9-10 lakh ($15-16,000) per year, that of a second grade college pass out is barely Rs 1.80-2 lakh ($3,000-3,300) a year.

Students who come from humble economic backgrounds and whose parents had to arrange study loans to be able to give their wards a decent education and ensure a bright future are worried too.

The numbers are alarming. Most of the engineering graduates who fail to grab an employment in their respective industry, end up joining call centers or BPO units in MNCs that could be disastrous for them in the future. However, the promising and flourishing growth of the startup ecosystem in India is emerging as a rescuer for those who are hard working, but still fail to get through the stringent interview process in MNCs, said Subhendu Panigrahi – Founder & CEO, Venturesity

Engineers who used to dream of working in swanky offices, living in penthouses and driving luxury cars are now concerned about finding ‘decent’ openings as they get into their final year at college.

Not surprisingly, engineers are taking up taking up jobs for which they are not qualified.The logical Indian, a huge Facebook community which started their own website some time back, wrote about a mechanical engineer who is driving an auto rickshaw in New Delhi because he has hungry mouths to feed and a family to look after.

Now, while that is a sad pointer to the grim scenario, it is pertinent to point out that only a small percentage of those who ‘pass out’ from engineering colleges do possess any skills worth the name at all. Most of them are not ‘employable’ and/ or ‘trainable’, feel the employers, a tragic reflection of the state of our training and academic institutions. The engineers produced by the huge number of private engineering colleges which have come up after the government sanction for them add up only by way of numbers, in the absence of sound infrastructure, well qualified staff and no emphasis on imparting quality education.

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ENGINEERING IN INDIA

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HOW TO DECIDE TO CHOOSE ENGINEERING AS A CAREER

THE NEXT GENERATION INDIAN - AMERICAN FOUNDERS

SILICON VALLEY: A bunch of young, second-generation Indian immigrants is building some of the hottest tech companies in Silicon Valley. While first generation immigrants tended to focus on enterprise tech, this new set of founders, given their longer and closer connect with the market, is creating consumer-facing ventures.

Over the years, India-born executives have snagged the top most tech jobs in the US, the latest being Sundar Pichai, who became CEO of Google. The Chennai-born Pichai and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella are among at least a dozen such talented Indians who left their home country as students in the 80s and 90s and today helm some of tech's most powerful companies.

There's however another influential group emerging in Silicon Valley with a strong India connection. These are not executives but young entrepreneurs behind some of the most talked about tech startups globally.

Data analytics firm Mixpanel, food delivery startup Sprig, express delivery venture Instacart, among others, have one thread binding them. All of these off-the-chart ventures are being steered by a bunch of mostly under 30, well networked, second-generation Indian immigrants, a cohort which is rapidly establishing its impact in the Valley. While some of these founders were born in the US, others moved to the country at an early age with their parents, who were typically academicians, doctors or engineers.

Starting consumer-facing businesses
Anand Rajaraman, who co-founded Junglee, a price comparison platform that was bought out by Amazon in 1998, says the key difference from the prior generation of mostly India-born entrepreneurs is that the new set of founders is more confident and connected with the mainstream culture. They are also on an average much younger compared to the Indian American entrepreneurs of the 1990s who started companies after several years of work experience.

"This is why you see more consumer-facing startups than before. There has been a steady migration of Indian entrepreneurs up the stack — starting from chips to infrastructure to enterprise software to internet to consumer facing companies. As you move up the stack, there is higher risk but also higher reward," says Rajaraman, who now runs an early-stage fund Cambrian Ventures.





Gagan Biyani, 28, and Neeraj Berry, 27, co-founders of Sprig, an on-demand fresh-food delivery service based in San Francisco, are both second-generation Indian Americans. Backed by venture funds like Greylock Partners, Social+Capital Partnership, among others, Sprig has raised almost $60 million since it began life in early 2013. Biyani, who earlier co-founded Udemy, an educational platform, says his risk taking appetite comes from his parents. "My parents came to America with almost no money in their pockets and no social network here. That was a bigger risk than I've ever been faced with," he says.

While most first-generation Indian immigrants to the US were professionals, Ankit Jain, 29, founder of mobile analytics venture, Quettra, saw his father build three startups, which instilled in him an entrepreneurial streak. "The reason we moved to Silicon Valley was because my dad wanted to live the startup dream. So I grew up in a house where my mom was the stable breadwinner while my dad helped found three startups. The first and third exited successfully while the second one flamed out. Growing up in such a household played a huge role in my own entrepreneurial journey," he says. Jain who had a plum job at Google where he was part of the Android team decided to quit the search giant and expectedly found support from his enterprising parents.

The well-networked generation
Having attended the finest US universities, these young entrepreneurs have great academic track records and to top it, they are also well-networked in the Valley among peers and investors.

Gokul Rajaram, product engineering lead at payments startup Square, says the millennial generation of Indian Americans combines the discipline and focus instilled in them from a young age by their families. This, he says, is their big advantage. "They come with a rigorous analytical and technical education; numerous role models they can look up to; and a social circle of peers that's equally steeped in technology and entrepreneurship from a young age," he says.

Rajaram, who's dubbed the father of Google Adsense, sold his venture Chai Labs to Facebook in 2010 and joined the social networking site where he stayed for three years. The new generation of tech founders has benefitted immensely under the tutelage of the likes of Rajaram, one of the most sought-after mentors and angel investors in Silicon Valley and now also in Indian startups.

The Silicon Valley influence
Amitt Mahajan, 30, who's sold two startups, one to Zynga and another to Google, says he is now focusing only on angel investing across US and Indian ventures. While the earlier generation started investing much later in their careers, the new bunch is turning investor, mentor and advisor all at the same time, even as they run their own startups. "I always knew I wanted to start a company. I received my first computer when I was five and started to program at nine. From when I was young, my mother was an entrepreneur, and I helped her with the accounting work and learned from her how to be self-suf ficient," Mahajan says.

Kanishk Parashar, 35, CEO & founder of Coin, touted as the universal credit card when it debuted two years ago, says this generation of Indian Americans is great at taking calculated risks. "The Valley startup scene doesn't treat failure as taboo, it's used as a tool to help you eventually get to a successful outcome," he says.

Parashar has had a rough ride with the shipment of his product — a single credit card-like device. There's been a delay of more than a year. He says he has been trying to create a successful startup since high school, but always as a side project, rather than as his only focus. "The background with which I was raised actually veered me away from committing fully to something as risky as a startup. It was only when I was able to fully commit to Coin was there significant progress," says Parashar, who moved to New York with his mother when she was pursuing a post-doctorate degree back in 1989.

With a solid footing in Silicon Valley, a thriving social network and a closer connect to the local market, we'll only see more tech companies being started by the second-generation of Indian Americans going forward.

courtesy:TOI

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