Once sizzling, TinyOwl, Housing call it quits on IIT campuses

From being one of the largest recruiters at the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) campuses, Housing.com and TinyOwl will not be participating in this year’s final placement season on these premier campuses.

This move comes in the wake of these start-ups continuing job cuts; streamlining workforce and tweaking their business model to survive.

Placement cell officials at the IITs said, citing business reasons, these start-ups, who had earlier confirmed participation during final placements will not be visiting IIT campuses for recruitment this year.

“It is very difficult to predict how the placements at IITs will be as far as startups are concerned. For instance, both TinyOwl and Housing.com had earlier confirmed their participation during the upcoming final placements that will begin on December 1. However, now both the start-ups have withdrawn their profiles citing business reasons. Moreover, Zomato has already been blacklisted by most of the IITs,” said an institute source at IIT Kharagpur (IIT-KGP).

In an emailed response to Business Standard, TinyOwl co-founder and chief executive, Harshvardhan Mandad confirmed the move by saying, “In consideration of our current business focus, TinyOwl has withdrawn from campus placements starting next month. We were pitching for IIT campuses for the campus placement of 2015-16. However, we are currently going through a restructuring phase, focused on establishing TinyOwl as a viable business unit. Optimising current resources and building productivity within the organisation is the first priority and an integral part of the process.”

Housing.com, however, did not reply to an email questionnaire sent.

At IIT-Madras too, start-ups have been withdrawing their profiles, albeit for other reasons. “While so far none of the startups have cited business reasons for such withdrawal, they have told us that they would now not be participating in the placements due to non-availability of desired slots,” said a source at IIT-Madras.

An aggressive bunch of recruiters during placements at IITs last year, some of the fastest growing start-ups are turbulent times in business this year, especially with regards to workforce. Realty portal Housing.com is already in the process of restructuring its business to focus only on buying and selling of apartments, even as it continues to reduce its employee strength. This July, the Housing.com board had sacked co-founder and the then CEO Rahul Yadav, with Jason Kothari recently being appointed as the latest CEO.

“The company is restructuring to focus on the home-buying real estate segment and drive further efficiencies across the company. Furthermore, Housing.com will be re-organising its teams to more efficiently execute this new focused strategy and, as a result, will be reducing its employee base,” the real estate portal had stated recently.

Housing.com for the last two years emerged the top start-up with most number of job offers at the IITs.

Being a first day recruiter, Housing had last year made 110 plus offers at the IIT campuses across Delhi, Mumbai and Madras with salaries being offered at the entry level upwards of Rs 18 lakh.

On the other hand, TinyOwl recently drew flak over the manner of its lay-offs. The Mumbai-based food technology company had laid off about 118 people in an effort to clamp on the increasing burn rate.

Participation of startups at IIT placements, hence, is anticipated to be a mixed bag with issues like streamlining of workforce and high-handedness during placement process likely to impact recruitment at the premier technology institutes. However, some of the startups have continued to seek day zero and day one slots, something blue-chip companies such as Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Oracle have been getting so far.

While IITs say Day-Zero slots are based on annual pay packages, start-ups argue the employee stock ownership plans (Esops) offered by them as part of the packages are good enough for them to seek the coveted placement slots. Apparently, it was Housing.com that had sought such a top slot during final placements at IIT Roorkee this year.

What's more, to safeguard students from startups that could end up reducing workforce a year or two down the line, IITs have this year decided to scrutinise them before offering slots during placements. Before the IITs begin their final placements this December, start-ups will have to furnish their balance sheet and annual reports of the past three years to the premier technology institutes.

According to sources at the IITs at Kharagpur, Kanpur, Mumbai and Guwahati, the institutes have decided to introduce certain due diligence measures before allowing start-ups to participate in placements. The measures include steps like review of the balance sheet of the past three years, study of the annual report and independent feedback from industry experts, as well as alumni employed in the past by these start-ups.

However, implementation of each of the steps will be at the discretion of the individual IITs, sources said.