Director: This could be the worst disaster NASA’s ever faced.

Gene Kranz: With all due respect, sir, I believe this is gonna be our finest hour.

-      Mission Control, Houston, Apollo 13 Moon Mission

Though we could not land on the moon last weekend, but surely, what happened was (the experience) definitely a thing which has given us all the more reason to conduct the next take-off sooner.

At HAS, our approach towards the event was to attract people who could be potential hires for our portfolio companies and get them talking. Though, we were not able to capitalize fully on the gathering but we’re happy that it was a great get-together of the right set of people.

Out of some 81 invitations we had sent out, Almost 50-55 turned up at the event which started at around 1845 hrs in this beautiful office of Akosha in Okhla.

As a run up to the event, HAS team was debating the ‘right’ format of the event with all the hiring founders, till about 1830hrs on Saturday.  Finally to settle on the ‘Problem-Solving Format’.

We waited a bit for people to trickle in and unwind before kick-starting. It started off with Rishi (Learning Outcomes) discussing his problem of digitizing the answer sheets of school exams for better evaluation. Some really promising answers kept the atmosphere exciting. Following on with Airwoot (Which had a very fine discussion), then iDubba, iimjobs and One52.

We wanted founders to use the candidates as a collective pool of experience to input new ideas/ perspectives for our start-ups. Founders were open, technical and frank about problems they were facing.  For candidates, it was a chance to get into the details of understanding real-time challenges of the startups, and to approach founders armed with knowledge of their business needs / interests.

As we jogged along discussing problems intensely, the format failed to keep the attention span of all attendees. (We had failed to consider the offline attention span of our consumers) This prompted us to change the format to an informal interaction session when we saw our audiences unsettled. But, this experience gave us a lot of food for thought, which we’re improvising on for the next event.

After about an hour and a half, we moved on to the rooftop for casual networking. This was where engagements happened. People were meeting their favorite founders and vice-versa. We realized that this engagement could have been much better if the problem-discussion round was much more planned and channelized.

Nevertheless, it was a well executed experiment for us, which gave us a better view of what more could have been done with this kind of event. Being a first timer, we are happy about the traction we have achieved and the word-of-mouth has been immensely successful.

So, for us, the metric of success was the quality of people, than quantity. Founders are already connecting with people and vice-versa.

We have learnt a lot from this event and we hope to make the next event more productive with all the learning we have got.

At The Morpheus, we will always keep striving to help our portfolio in their every endeavor. As far as hiring is concerned, we will soon be back with second event. This time, More Hugs and More Productivity.

If you are one of the participants, please take some time to fill this feedback form.

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Love & Hugs

The Morpheus

We think the digital technology exists today to fundamentally change how companies and consumer interact with each other. We believe that a few great people can make a big difference  -  Saurabh, Founder, Airwoot (Memetic Labs)

Learning Outcomes was something I did during my layovers enroute home – Rishi, Founder, Learning Outcomes

Learning Outcomes started out as an experiment. However, the response to the MVP and the potential for creating real impact convinced me to quit my job and build a product that re-imagines school assessments.

All the need-gap analysis could have never prepared us for the challenge of building our business – we have had to make up imaginary kids, fight with security guards and resort to using lines like “I am like your son only” to secure a meeting with the school principals. After dramatic mornings, we come back to create India’s outcomes based reporting suite using R/Python/Django/Android/MongoDB /MySQL/VBA/Excel.

We work with schools in Pune, Nashik, Bangalore and expanding to Delhi and Mumbai. We are helping the premier educational board in India on a custom assignment & started an extremely presitgious scholarship evaluation assignment.

We’re extremely sensitive towards our customers. We are fun, flexible and as laid back as a growing start up can afford to be! We don’t tolerate nonsense. We work hard. We promise there will be no bullshit team building activities for the heck of it.

People who have good mathematical aptitude and are willing to get their hands dirty. We love to try out our ideas instead of ‘brainstorming’. We are hiring
1: Android Application developers (Specialist Role)
2: Business and Operations Analyst(Generalist Role)

Deets here: http://blog.learning-outcomes.com

It’s not just about the cards you hold. It’s also about how you pay with them! -  Nikhil, Founder, Cardback

You go through the highs and lows of educating all stakeholders on what’s possible – job seekers, College Heads / Directors, and SMBs. When you face all this during a day, you surely know, that you are on the right track and solving a highly complex but necessary problem - Nikhilesh, Founder, CvBhejo

The beginning

Before CvBhejo, I founded an NGO in Pune to teach slum children and a theater group in Hyderabad. Now, my vision is to  redefine how recruitment is done in small cities.

Why CvBhejo?

I saw that SMBs in small cities need skilled people but can’t afford platforms to recruit effectively.  It’s also difficult to contact job seekers via internet. Only 3 of potentially 10 crore job seekers in regional areas are listed in current databases. CvBhejo is India’s first mobile-based platform to help job-seekers, colleges & employers recruit effectively.

Typical day in the office

We pitch to prospects from newspapers; build partnerships with colleges, counsel job seekers, and sell to SMBs. We quickly realized it’s tough to sell anything… but tougher to sell to an SMB, and toughest of all, to sell to a small city SMB.

What we’re upto?

CvBhejo is used by 42K job seekers,  900 recruiters, and partners with 65 colleges. We have 5500+ jobs with notable clients like IDBI Intech, PVR Cinemas, India Infoline, Idea Cellular & others. Based in Rajasthan, we grew to six cities. We plan to focus on Jaipur.

We are looking for

Somebody who doesn’t want to fit into a particular role and is happy to work in Jaipur. You need to have the attitude ‘I will figure it out (with some expletives)’.

Life at CvBhejo…

Want to create a social impact by using mobile technology in regional areas and giving people jobs? Then why don’t you come over on 27th April to meet Nikhilesh & his team, interact with them and perhaps Hug them?

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Know more about Hug-a-Startup here

Register for the event here

I had a blog which gained momentum and recruiters were asking me to forward interesting opportunities to people in my network. I realised that existing channels for finding jobs were not effective for me or any of my friends.

- Tarun, Founder, iimjobs