“If there’s something you want to build, but the tech isn’t there yet, just find the closest possible way to make it happen,” said Dennis Crowley, co-founder of Foursquare, a local search and discovery service mobile app. Crowley couldn’t have been more correct. Organised by MyRefers, a referral-based online jobs marketplace, the Startup Mashup held in the capital on March 28 saw 200 engineers creating solutions for some of the popular digital start-up companies in India. For Lalit Bhagia, CEO, MyRefers, the programme allows companies to hand pick the best talent.

“All the candidates that have participated in the event are referred by either their colleagues or institutes. As start-ups generally look out for talents that have the potential to scale up the business, the referrals act as sort of a guarantee as companies know that there is someone who has vouched for each participant. So the companies do not hesitate while hiring,” said Bhagia.

This was evident with the event attracting the interest of some of the famous start-ups based in the capital. From mobile payment gateway companies such as PayU and MobiKwik to Gaadi.com, Groupon, Limetray.com, 91mobiles and Socialcops.com, and even B2B platforms such as TargetingMantra and Acquia, everyone was busy scouting the best talent. The Mashup brings talent and companies under one roof, where both can join forces to create something extraordinary.

Interestingly, even though the companies looked eager to recruit, it was not a cakewalk. Each representative had to provide reasons to participants to join their respective companies. “For those who are interested in understanding consumer behaviour patterns, TargetingMantra is a good place to start. We work for e-commerce websites such as Yatra, Paytm, Shopclues and help them create a personalised shopping experience for each customer. The website looks different for each consumer. Each customer is sent personalised emails,” said Saurabh Nangia, CEO, TargetingMantra.

Virender Bisht, the MobiKwik CTO, talked about the company’s vision to make it the preferred digital wallet for Indian consumers. “The objective is to create a seamless transaction experience which is safe for consumers to use. We want to replace physical wallet with mobile,” he said.

Groupon was on the lookout for young talent who would play a crucial role in the overhaul of the website. “Groupon India will be turning from a deals site to a discovery deals site in the next 8-9 months. With the Indian site all set to become an independent product, we are looking for the right kind of talent that will help us create a brand new product serving the needs of Indian consumers,” said Ankur Warikoo, CEO, Groupon India.

Called the ‘Hackathon’, the day-long recruitment process was divided into six different challenges—user experience challenge, codeathon (coding for the web), user interface challenge, data science challenge, codeathon for mobile, and product management challenge. Participants were free to select a challenge. Bhagia said a person should be free to select the field she wants to make a mark in. “While all of them are software engineers, not everyone has the same goal. Even in software, the roles can be further divided into various segments. Keeping this in mind, we created different categories,” he said.

While each winner walked away with a job offer, a trophy, a certificate, a Goqii watch and coupons worth R5,000 from Groupon, other potential candidates were also interviewed and were offered jobs. “Winners were offered a job and their current salary was increased by two-fold,” said Bhagia.

Sukrit Gupta, Rahul Vajpayee, Ashok K Vajpayee, Palash Goyal and Neeraj Mishra were declared the winners of the data science challenge. Avinab Mistry and Abhilasha Aggarwal won the user experience challenge. Vineet Dave won the user interface challenge.

Bhagia plans to turn the Startup Mashup into an annual event next year onwards. “We would like to conduct a similar tech mashup every year in other big cities also,” he added.

The Startup Mashup was organised by MyRefers, in association with The Financial Express.