The GreenHat Blog

“GreenHat……so are you one of those environmentalist college groups coming up these days?”, she asked with a fair amount of curiosity and a genuine eagerness to know.

“Not quite so”, I replied, trying to explain that GreenHat is no way out there to save the world from harmful CO2 emissions and that we do NOT burn the midnight oil trying to find solutions to problems like global warming.

December 18, 2008: A team of 5 landed in Chennai with a bundle of publicity material (read posters, magazines, pamphlets etc) really knowing very little what was in store for the next couple of days.

PAN-IIT ’08 – a global confluence of IIT Alumni, Faculty and Students- was held this year in IIT Madras and we at GreenHat were invited as an IIT startup. We soon found ourselves sitting next to biggies like Google, TATA, Amazon….( you name it ) as exhibitors in the IIT Tech Expo. The prospect that we were fledglings in the midst of giants and that this was perhaps the first commercial expo where we were on the other side of the wall was quite intimidating at first, but we were soon on song, winning minds and hearts alike with our aim, our idea, our vision.

From L to R: Gourab, Kamal, Pravesh and Saurabh at the GreenHat stall

“Right, so this is what you don’t do. What about the rest of it?”, she wanted to know.

I smiled, quite satisfied with the curiosity a name like GreenHat can create and what all can people link it to. “Coffee?”, I offered and she agreed. Now just as you begin to think that I keep offering CCD treats to anyone, please don’t jump to conclusions, I seriously don’t. It was just a part of the rehearsal.

December 19, 2008: I was sitting in front of this gentleman, 2 times my age and I don’t know how many times my fortune, sipping coffee and talking business. He was a venture capitalist (VC, as they prefer to call it), trying to figure out what I had in mind, where I will get the money flowing in from and what value will GreenHat generate for its customers. He seemed quite convinced with the idea and congratulated me on the initiative.

Gourab and Vishnu with Prof. A. Patra (Dean, Alumni Affairs & International Relations, IIT KGP), Prof. D. Acharya (Director, IIT KGP) and Mr. Ravichandran (Director, Aricent)

I began, “Let’s try to visualize the current education scenario in India- 17000+ colleges, 10 million students, 95% of which are Tier II or Tier III.

Are there Career Services Centers in colleges as most US schools have?…….NO

Is there an industry relevance in the curriculum?…………………………….Very little

How effective are the placement cells?…….Almost non-existent except in the top ones

The combined result: a career dilemma and low employability of students!!!

Now, let’s try to visualize the current youth trends- gaming, networking, interactive, user friendly interface, multimedia, that’s where the digital revolution has brought us.

GreenHat combines both these attributes. A student: a) Spots the right career path b) Grows his/her skills and employability level and c) Gets spotted by top recruiters through eCareer Fairs. All this and much more through a user friendly and interactive portal- YouChoose.” At the same time SMEs in India, nearly 8000 of them get a cost effective way of promoting their brand and tap into the best talent pool available on the site.

In short what we do is- “Build Brands. Carve Careers”.

“Sounds interesting”, she said. “But how did you come up with this idea?”

December 20, 2008: We met with / listened to a number of people whom we had earlier just seen on television or people who had possibly a wiki written on them. Amartya Sen, Stephen Cohen, B. Muthuraman, Chetan Bhagat…(you name it). It was great interacting with the likes of Mr. Arjun Malhotra and some really illustrious alumni from the IITs…people who have brought about a change. The appreciation we got, all the pat-on-the-backs and the expression,” What, you started your own company?” gave us the much-needed enthusiasm and fuel to go ahead or I should say gallop ahead.

The GreenHat team with Mr. Arjun Malhotra

“You see, being an IITian is a responsibility, not a privilege”, I tried to explain to her. “In one of the sessions during the event, an alumnus had raised this question- The IITians today are living on the brand value created by us. What are they doing to multiply this value for their juniors?” Another had expressed concern over the fact that the quality of graduates that Indian varsities are producing has sharply decreased over the years and sadly nothing is being done in this direction. This is where we step in- trying to bridge the ever-increasing gap between the Industry and the Academia.”

“But wait, what’s GreenHat? I mean why not any other hat?”, she said signaling a hat on her head, as I prepared to leave. “Well, its from Edward de Bono’s book. The green thinking hat signifies lateral and creative thinking. That’s what we believe in- thinking out-of-the-box; doing things differently or rather just not doing them”.

Perhaps that’s what IIT is all about- Inspire, Innovate, Transform.

Everything has a reason. Everyone has a purpose. Why are we here?

The germination of an idea started when we observed reality.

We noticed that the placement process in colleges is tending towards a more complicated structure, with a diverse set of companies visiting campuses. Tis, we felt, leaves the student confused about their future careers. We do understand that everyone wants to get placed as soon as possible to be “job secured” but that has led to an increased tendency to apply blindly to every company, the only differentiator, in most cases, being the compensation.

A true “match” is one which brings the employer and the “employee” on a common ground. A platform where visions, goals and opportunities are shared. It is our utmost beleif and a perceived reality that there is much more to a job than compensation – the values and culture of the employer, growth and learning opportunities. We have seen graduates appearing for placements unaware of such perspectives which result in an employee-employer mismatch. 

An analysis of attrition figures of working professionals in the first 2 years of employment goes a long way to show that the “germination” is based on thought, analysis, research and intent!