Global WFH opportunities open up for Indian tech talent

 Anjali Venugopalan

Sreeradha Basu

Correspondent, ET

Indian technology professionals are now getting more oers for remote work from global employers. According to several companies which help hire high-prole tech talent, demand has gone up twothree times from pre-pandemic levels, as more companies are now convinced that work-from-home indeed works. Hiring companies like Instahyre, Interviewbit, Rocket, Techfynder, CIEL HR Services and Pesto Tech said rms from the US, Europe, Australia and the Middle East were now hiring, especially for contract roles. Hiring sentiment was dull in March, April and even May due to lockdowns in place globally, but it has since picked up. The number of applications and people hired have more than trebled in JulySeptember (yes) compared with the previous quarter, said Sarbojit Mallick, a cofounder of Instahyre. Instahyre works with 8,700 companies now, up from 5,300 last year, and its revenue has increased threefour times, he said. Most of the addition of clients is from the US and other international markets. The long wait for an H-1B visa, a greater desire to work remote and easier access to international talent are what’s giving a llip to this trend, said Abhinav Agrawal, a cofounder of US-based tech and nance hiring rm Rocket. Praveen Madire, CEO of Dublin-based Techfynder, a company that helps hire tech talent on short-term contracts mostly in Ireland and the UK, said demand had gone up by at least 20% since February. Techfynder has placed about a hundred Indians in the last ve to six months. At Pesto Tech, an edtech startup oering remote work opportunities for Indian engineers, US-based startups including Highlighter, Clipboard Health, Pulley and Snorkel have hired multiple developers, said cofounder Ayush Jaiswal. “Remote working is poised to become a norm for millennials and Gen Z — and the last few months have only accelerated that trend. Businesses have started recognising the wider talent pool available to them once they go remote,” he said, adding that the market demand had prompted the company to launch bigger batch sizes. "Traditionally 35% of the global jobs outsourced to freelancers were Tech jobs, Covid has broken location barriers and these jobs are being increasingly accessed by local tech talent," said Kamal Karanth, co-founder, Xpheno, a specialist staing company. USA, Australia, France and UAE are the top 4 countries accessing this talent pool The current top Tech gigs that are on top dollar rates are robotics, Data scientists and AI professionals, he added. This trend is also helping employees who are on “workcations”, said Mallick. One person who got hired actually works from the Jammu & Kashmir region for an Aussie rm, and makes as much as he would while working for an MNC in India, he said. These companies are willing to pay a 30-50% premium over Indian companies, said executives from hiring rms. A programmer with six-seven years of experience might make about Rs30-40 lakh a year with an India-based company, but this would go up to Rs 50- 60 lakhs from a US rm, including ESOPs which can be traded for cash, said Instahyre’s Mallick. For critical projects, there’s demand for high-end Indian techies with skills in product architecture, cyber security and cloud technologies. Techies all over the country, often away from hubs like Bengaluru, Gurgaon and Pune, are working for global product companies in getting the simplest parts developed and carrying out testing. Companies are using them for cost benets, recruitment and staing rm CIEL HR Services’ CEO Aditya Narayan Mishra said. “They earn in US dollar rates ($50-100/hour, sometimes even higher) which give them a substantial upside,” said Mishra. This can go up to $250/hour for higher-end tasks Well-funded foreign startups are even willing to pay globally competitive compensations, but they demand extremely premium talent which is hard to nd, said Abhimanyu Saxena, a cofounder of Interviewbit and Scaler. In-bound queries at Interviewbit have gone up two-three times postCovid. More Israeli, European and US companies are now showing interest, said Saxena. European Internet company Rocket Internet, for instance, recently hired a remote team in India. Companies like Gojek and Twilio have also hired from India, said Instahyre’s Mallick. Rocket’s Agrawal said while 75% of companies he works with were open to hiring remote talent, up from 5% (or 15 times) last year, hiring had only gone up two-three times. This is because there is still some amount of location-based wage stickiness, and a reluctance on the part of talent to change jobs during a pandemic.  

Source: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/technology/global-wfh-opportunities-open-up-for-indian-tech-talent/articleshow/79421036.cms?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NewsDigest&utm_content=Tech&utm_term=1&ncode=7b57c34b23c590b0660c7e828b59698d30890d3f25a5941047a2f8267b7c96e5589123e5dff2e7c6c56c853c9158349a4555f9faf4c35aaf8d457c8c5bfe5adc33c401c1903cc513b8f955ed2cc6df60