From rise in start-up culture, newage career options like e-tutoring, vlogging, brewing to the emerging ones like cyber security and management accountant, these options stood-out in 2015
Start-up rage
People like Satya Nadella, Sundar Pichai and Indira Nooyi have already proven that business management skills are in the DNA of Indians. A new breed of young entrepreneurs like Sachin Bansal of Flipkart, Deepinder Goyal of Zomato, Rohit Bansal of Snapdeal, Richa Kar of Zivame, Harshvardhan Mandad of TinyOwl and Ritesh Agarwal of OYO Rooms, once again proved this. They have all established their brands through innovations and entrepreneurial skills, even before attaining an age of 30. These young entrepreneurs are the pioneers of start-up culture in India and they are contributing magnificently to the economic growth of India.
India is the world’s fourth largest market for start-up businesses, where tech firms are leading the growth of India’s start-up businesses, the IT sector is growing at a rate of 14 per cent per annum and the e-commerce market is expected to grow up to 50 per cent by 2020. The most phenomenal aspect of this growing trend is that majority of these start-ups is primarily owned and controlled by the young entrepreneurs in the age bracket of 20-30 years. That’s why foreign investors and venture capitalists are taking huge interests in the start-ups owned and controlled by the young IITians and graduates from IIMs who preferred own ventures rather than serving big brands at fat pay packets.
Venture capital investors are profusely pouring the money in such promising start-ups. According to Dr Sharmishtha Dey, chief advisor at SAM Consultant: “India is a big market and foreign investors too, understand the potential of Indian businesses. Start-ups like Flipkart, Snapdeal, OYO Rooms are the leading fundraisers in the market and hundreds of others like Olacabs, Hike, Shopclues and Inmobi, etc. had already received various rounds of follow-on financing from foreign investors.”
Start-ups are not only successful in luring private entities, but they are equally strategic in meeting the needs of the public sector. Merely a three-year-old information security firm; Innefu labs is serving to Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and Defense Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) with its face and speech recognition security system
In addition to fund raising, these start-ups are also venturing into mergers and acquisitions (M&A). Flipkart acquired the fashion portal Myntra and Snapdeal took over the Freecharge — the mobile payment gateways and Gurgaon-based Zomato acquired three international brands viz, Urbanspoon, NexTable and MaplePOS. The IT, Food, Education, Health and Beauty and Fitness are the most appealing sectors to Indian start-ups.
India enjoys demographic dividend, in the next five years the total working population will be 112 million or more. Every financial year, almost 3100 new firms start operation in India. According to the latest report of the NASSCOM, if the growth remains consistent for the next five years, then almost 2.5 lakh new jobs will be created by the start-up firms in the same period.
Government of India is also aware about the immense potential of flourishing start-ups and that’s why in the current fiscal budget, it has promoted the Self Employment and Talent Utilization (SETU).
Moreover, formation of ‘Innovation labs’ in various parts of India and allocation Rs2000 crore to assist start-ups in the IT and biotechnology will eventually provide a fresh boost to the young entrepreneurs. Not only the GOI, but the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has also taken some initiatives and simplified the existing rules to facilitate the growth of start-up companies and people associated with them.
The writer is Yogesh Sood, CMD, Blanchard Research and Training India llP.
Emerging e-tutoring
Online tutoring grew manifold in India especially with platforms like WizIQ, Vedantu and many others. It is becoming the next big thing in India as it is helping students to get individual attention and turning out to be better for those who feel shy about asking questions in a classroom. With more and more students turning to online tutorial systems and sometimes even seeking resolution of their homework queries, the demand for Internet teachers is fast increasing. According to an industry report, India will require at least 6 million more teachers by 2020.
“With the advent of 3G and 4G network and smart phones adaptation throughout the country, one can see the widespread adaptation with popular tutoring companies offering complete online courses to ensure not to miss the market opportunity and also offer their services to learners who didn’t have this opportunity earlier. For instance Aakash Institute launched Aakash live their fully online programme that offers IIT, JEE courses to leaners across the country. Other names are Meritnation, Byju Classes and so many more. It’s a huge opportunity for teachers to be more employable and able to draw good salaries as compared to olden times when teachers were paid peanuts. learners are certainly the beneficiaries since they are taught by best in the industry,” Harman Singh, CEO of WizIQ, tells you.
In online tutoring, teachers can choose hours a week they want to teach and at what time he or she is available online. This flexibility is attracting lots of teachers to online tutoring. “Online tutoring is giving huge opportunities to even housewives, retired teachers, or people in other professions who otherwise could not have gone into teaching. Due to the upcoming concept of online teaching they are able to do so now from the confines of their homes,” Vamsi Krishna, CEO of Vedantu, says.
Though e-tutoring is not a new concept in the west, but in India it saw a huge demand for online teachers this year.
“We all have heard of teachers turning to moonlighting to earn dollars by teaching students in America, especially Math. They could make up to $ 100 per hour. The shift is within now. Every tutor or a tutoring company has an online arm, it’s something they can’t do without. In terms of numbers, online education is an $8-billion industry in India, and is poised to grow to $50 billion by 2020. India has one of the largest education systems in the world with a network of more than one million schools and 18,000 higher education institutions. More than half of the country’s 1.2 billion population falls in the target market for education and related services. You can see the magnitude of the market,” Singh says.
Cyber world
According to NASSCOM’s president, R Chandrashekhar, the current demand for ethical hackers in India is 77,000 professionals per year whereas the yearly supply is a paltry 15,000. The IT security market is estimated to be $77 billion in 2015 and is growing at over 8 per cent annually. The demand for IT security professionals is expected to rise to 6 million (globally) by 2019 and the world faces a projected shortfall of 1.5 million.
“Ethical hacking as a career has become very popular amongst youngsters and there has been a rise in the number of people enrolling for the programme and also the launch of new training institutes. There is a big difference between hacking and ethical hacking. The latter is known for the cyber security purpose and the job is to detect any open port at the cyber space and secure it for getting misused by sealing the data or getting access to their IP address for wrong purposes,” Rajat Kumar Dutta, head content development, Jetking Infotrain Pvt ltd, says.
Due to lack of talent there have been rampant cyber offences leading to a loss of Rs54 crore last year alone. Every company today needs to be comply with Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and sites like Ola, Zomato, Gaana.com amongst others that failed to do so resulted in their sites getting hacked earlier this year. The sensitive information of users such as credit card information, contact numbers and login details are exposed in public. Around 70 per cent of the companies in India are underprepared for a cyber-attack. Thus it has become the need of the hour to have strong cyber security module.
“To be an ethical hacker, one has to undergo a particular certification given by the certified bodies to pursue this career. There is CEH (Certified Ethical Hacker) course which is available in various versions in India. They can also undergo Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) which is an independent information security certification governed by the International Information Systems Security Certification Consortium (ISC). Once they get certified, they can get into l2 security jobs and protecting network from any kind of hacking. The ladder goes up to l3, l4 stage and end up becoming chief security officer (CSO). Every year, the course modules are revamped and updated according to the changing nature of the online space. We have virtual labs where different kinds of situations are created and students are asked to identify the open ports and secure them. That’s how we assess their knowledge,” Dutta tells you.
Vloggers’ paradise
After the trend of selfies taking over the world, velfies and video blogging became the talk of the town in 2015 and a great source of earning. Emerging as a passion and becoming a full-time profession, there has been a rise in the trend of vlogging and various online platforms giving opportunities to the college students to come up with their own video blog and get it featured across the online platform.
“2015 is the year of vloggers. A lot of vloggers got recognised throughout the year and became a great source of earning through this lucrative career option. There have been over 100 successful vloggers that has been launched in the past two years. After setting an example by Kanan Gill and Biswa Kalyan Rath’s Pretentious Movie Reviews, the trend just shot up. Apart from the comedy genre, we have vloggers in various segments like cooking, technology and game reviewers, fashion and make-up vloggers, love and relationship vloggers, photography vloggers etc. We had Dubsmash coming over and becoming a rage. People started making something from nothing at the virtual space and making a living through their creative video content,” Nikunj Jain, co-founder of FranklyMe, tells you.
Platforms like FrankMe, which is a video sharing and social media networking service, gives a lot of opportunity to the college students to make vlogs and earn through it. “It’s all about unprofessional self expression which no course can teach you. All you need is an idea and a camera to shoot the video. The beauty lies in being truly democratic and more interesting. There have been students who earned Rs25,000 and even a lakh from their videos by getting sponsors and tie-ups,” Jain says.
Brewing all the way
In 2015, alcohol and introduction of international flavours from across the world led to setting up of several brewing companies in India. On an average there were over 50 brewing units that opened up this year.
“Brewing has never been recognised in India before. But 2015 saw many companies launching micro-brewing units with low alcohol content. This radical change is happening because a lot of States are giving micro-brewery licenses to the brewers. Delhi is still waiting for formal approval for setting up micro-brewery. It’s expected to give out the licence of approval by April 2016 and there is expected to open up 100 brewery companies the coming two years in Delhi itself,” Ishan Grover, who is a brewery master and has brewpubs in Gurgaon, says.
Talking about the training programmes, a lot of institutes are planning to introduce degree programmes in this course. “At the moment, we’ve only one institute providing a degree course in sugar technology and winery but many start-up firms are planning to launch a specialised training programme in distilling and brewing. We take students who have studies bio-chemist, micro-biology and bio-chemistry and give them three months of formal training on site on basics of brewing and how alcohol fermentation is done. It stands out to be a good career option. It’s hard working yet creative profession and pays off well. The industry in Gurgaon is brewing 1.5 lakh litres a month and there is going to rise of 2.5 to 3 lakh litres by next year. The profit ratio involved is 300 per cent in this industry,” says.
Management accountant is the key
As India is an important hub for finance and accounting outsourcing, a large amount of financial transactions for global companies are processed in India. This also supports the demand for management accountants with globally transferrable skills.
Companies expect their finance professionals to play a greater role in guiding the organisation towards sustainable growth, rather than just crunch numbers. Finance professionals, who have the ability to analyse past data and at the same time steer the company through the risky times to long-term business success, are sought after key people irrespective of the size of enterprises today. Top management is increasingly looking at their accounting/finance teams as co-pilots who help them take the company through rough as well as smooth weather.
While accounting courses provide students with the capability and understanding of accounting processes/procedures and regulation, management accounting courses provide the most appropriate balance of accounting and business management skills. A management accounting qualification develops analytical, application-oriented, decision making skills — rather than just theoretical knowledge, thus appropriately preparing the finance professional for industry needs.
Management accounting professionals are also more capable of working with different teams such as marketing, human resources, strategy/planning, production, etc, and can therefore assist in creating a dynamic workplace environment. The skills acquired through such programmes allow qualified members to facilitate long-term growth and improved sustainable businesses through better cost containment models.
In 2014, students in India who qualified as management accountants earned an average basic salary of Rs9.10 lakh per annum plus Rs0.80 lakh as bonus, while full-fledged members with experience earned an average basic salary of Rs22.30 lakh per annum plus Rs2.40 lakh as bonus.
As the skills acquired through management accountancy programs are relevant across different industries and can be applied across business functions too, students gain multi-fold benefits in employment opportunities locally and globally. Common career paths that students seeking management accountancy programs can hold, following the qualification are business or financial analyst, group treasurer, financial controller, project manager, director of operations, corporate finance, business planning, pricing analyst and management consultant.
(The writer is Debasish Biswas, country head-India, Chartered Institute of Management Accountants)