Get2Galaxy helps tap stars from smaller cities

On the face of it, it looks like yet another job portal. But what sets Get2galaxy apart is that the site targets students from Tier 2/Tier 3 cities, and SMEs and start-ups.

>Get2Galaxy.com> i s an online portal where students on the lookout for jobs and companies looking for employees register, the portal helps them connect and placements are finalised.

“The founding team – Subramanyam Kasibhat (Founder-Launcher), Savita Kasibhat (Director), S. Arumugham (Co-Launcher) and Abhishek Suresh (Astronomer)- we are all from Tier 2, Tier 3 cities; we know what students from those cities go through... and that was the idea behind the venture,” says Mr Arumugam, says.

“There are several opportunities there but students lack exposure... and that is what we want to give them,” he says. “With my other ventures doing well, I started this more as an experiment to identify and solve problems faced by students graduating from Tier 2/Tier 2 cities,” says Mr Kasibhat.

From a student perspective, the key issue was lack of awareness and access to the large number of SMEs where they are eligible to get a deserving job, and for SMEs, it was lack of infrastructure and processes to handle fresher hiring, he says.

A former Texas Instruments employee and a serial entrepreneur in the technology products space with ventures such as Violet3D, E-Sutra Chronicles and Aureole Technologies in his kitty, Mr Kasibhat says the huge potential and benefits of this as a business proposition was recently discovered by the founding team.

“We wanted to challenge and disprove the notion that 80 per cent of students passing out of our colleges are not eligible for a job as quoted by many veterans of the IT Industry,” he says. The thing about SMEs and start-ups is that they don't give much importance to a person's communication skills unlike an MNC. SMEs and start-ups want technically sound people, who would be willing to stay on the job, and a job means a lot to students from smaller cities unlike others who have several opportunities at hand; so it works out well, Mr Arumugham explains.

Revenue Model

The service is free for students and the recruiting company is charged a flat Rs 10,000. “Companies are charged per event, which is one round of recruitments. The company can recruit one person or 20 people for five positions, doesn't matter,” Mr Arumugham says.

Unlike other such portals, the Get2Galaxy team of ‘Opportunity Enablers' is more involved as it takes care of the entire recruitment process. “We conduct the online/offline tests, shortlist applicants, conduct interviews and then send the students to the company only for the final round of interviews,” Mr Arumugam says.

In less than a year of operations, the Bangalore-based start-up has roped in 18 customers and over 40,000 students across India on the Web site, and has helped several students from Coimbatore, Madurai, Hubli and Bhubaneshwar find jobs. Get2Galaxy has also become a networking site for users to interact. “For instance, one of the students had asked for recruitment to L&T, but we don't do that on the portal. but other members were writing to him telling him how he could get in touch with L&T and how he should prepare for the interviews,” he added.

Plug N Play Testers

Yet another feature is the company's Plug N Play Testers part of the business where Get2Galaxy offers solutions for fulfilling short term resource needs. The need could be that of testing a solution, user experience feedback, market research or generating reports. “For a company that develops a mobile app, for instance, they would need external people to test the new product and give feedback for improvement; the portal also helps recruit people who participate in this testing process,” Mr Arumugham says. “And this is a solution that several industrialists have evinced interest in,” he adds.

Is the company scouting for venture funding? “No. We believe in bootstrapping and intend to make it as big as possible with bootstrapping and then go for funding only if some companies offer to fund our venture,” Mr Arumugham says.

However, since the core service is not profitable the company intends to start value-added services (VAS) to help Get2Galaxy become profitable. “The students who come in to Tier 1 cities would need accommodation, so we plan to create a PG-rental service the student can use and we will charge him for this,” he explains.

Another such VAS would be an accent training service that the company offers in partnership with web-based voice recognition service Speetra to help students neutralise their local accent. To address the huge market available and after seeing unexpected success in their venture of enabling students find jobs, the Get2Galaxy team also plans to organise an online job fair in January.

“It will be just like a regular job fair- but virtual- where online tests are conducted over two days and scores are put up, companies browse the portal and chose students they wish to recruit,” Mr Arumugham says.

Companies are charged Rs 3,000 for this during the fair. “In three days, over 2,000 students have already applied for the fair,” Mr Arumugham says. The service is today open just for engineering graduates but the team intends to open the service across sectors soon. The ‘Opportunity Enablers' at Get2Galaxy certainly have a lot to do.

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