Did you know that the best job for a fresher is in a startup? Well, it is.
Did you know that the best job for a growing professional or someone who loves challenges, is in a startup? Well, it is.

Proto.in is taking on new heights and I am quite proud of it, everyday that I get to work more on it and sit and disseminate some of the ground level issues that companies, teams and individuals are facing to make things happen. Efficiency is the name of the game in the valley and that is essentially what makes things click. Well, we are gonna have to work a little to get this machine well oiled and get to that point. But there is certainly pleasure and a privilege in laying the groundwork for it all to come through.

I Probably should be making this announcement on the Proto blog first, but since I have been dripping sweat and bleeding a lot more on this matter, I shall have the honor of having you all read it from here first. Alright, alright, I shall get onto the topic:

One of the biggest problems that startups have is in hiring people. During the last OpenCoffeeClub meet that we had here in Chennai, this was pretty much the topic, and I raised all the questions that I wanted answers to and have been working on it since we broke off that day to go our ways. It is a very solvable problem, just needs the right partners in place to make it happen and Proto.in has just that - all the right partners you need.

There are essentially three elements, to this problem:

1. Students are not even aware that startups are an option.
2. Startups don’t have the medium to gather mass. Most of them require one or two people, compared to the 800 people that TCS requires. End result, no placement office is all that very keen on small numbers.
3. Students need training on development platforms that make sense for startups.

Point #3 is actually a very nice business proposition. Imagine a centre like Aptech or NIIT which trains people on Python, Ruby, AJAX etc, on project (read hands-on) mode. The business can possibly make money by developing projects for smaller clients, and the very projects could also serve as assignments for the students to practice and nurture their programming talents on. As long as the centre delivers quality programmers, the startups will keep pounding to have more human resources from them, and the cycle will go on.

When I spoke about this to someone, the first thing she mentioned was, get me a centre to do this in Chennai and lets work out a franchisee model to spawn this across to various cities. I don’t see a reason why it wouldn’t work. It has all the necessary ingredients to make it work. NIIT and centres such as that, should definitely look into such options.

As for #1 and #2, I have been suggesting within the Open coffee club group in Chennai towards forming a group within the startup community so that they can be tackled. There is a large scale solution of this that we are working on, which we will be unveiling during Proto (in January) and will be on full swing starting February.

Excited? You should be. The Ecosystem is one step closer to being efficient.