Rajeev Minocha: Helping Senior Executives Relocate From US to India

BY A.MATTHEWS

SAN JOSE, CA – Signs of the weakening US economy coupled with the economic boom in India, presented just the right opportunity for the launch of  US2IndiaJobs, a company  which helps senior executives in the US relocate to India.

CEO Rajeev Minocha  gives credit to his wife Nandini for her astuteness in seizing the moment and starting the Silicon Valley based company in November 2007. Not even a year old, the company is seeing many signs of success.

Says Minocha, “Nandini started the company and then recruited me earlier this year to scale it!”

He goes on to add that the shortage of talent, particularly at the senior level in India, led them to believe that there could be a market for exporting talent from the US and other countries, to India. Lack of any organized way for executives to make such a move further strengthened our belief that we could help provide a bridge between the employees and the employers.

Nandini brought her past experience in the executive search space to the venture. She ran her search firm focused on senior and mid level executives in advertising, media and marketing space in India, the Mid East and South East Asia for five years. In addition she had worked for over five years in account management, client servicing roles in various advertising and marketing agencies both in India and the US.

Calling the process “reverse brain drain,” Minocha explains that US2IndiaJobs is an executive search firm/portal that bridges the gap between global executives/senior technology professionals looking to relocate to India and companies wanting to hire employees with international experience.

“We help the employers identify suitable candidates who fit the bill and are willing to relocate. We then help them in the selection process as well as in bridging the expectations on both sides in the entire cycle. On the candidate side there is the first most important phase of understanding the background as well as providing a canvas of realistic opportunities that might exist suiting the background and the ambition. Providing counseling and guidance throughout the process is the other big service that our consultants offer. Our role starts from the moment we get a requirement from the client (and the candidates in our system) and ends after the selected candidate has been successfully relocated and settled in the new position.”

As to the main segments where jobs are readily available in India, Minocha reveals that India has been growing at an average 8.8% annual growth rate, which has been the best rate since India’s independence in 1947. With the global slow down predicted for the current year, even the most pessimistic estimates on India’s growth are pegged above 7%.

With this kind of growth, apart from the technology sector, there is a boom in jobs in the real estate, infrastructure, healthcare, education, hospitality, retail, manufacturing, and many others.

Though the process may seem daunting with regard to legal formalities involved in relocation, Minocha allays these fears. He reassures that the legal formalities for working in India are fortunately not that complex. There is no work visa needed if you have an Indian passport. However, US citizens and those of other nationalities need a work permit to be able to work in India but the process of application and obtaining it is fairly simple. Persons of Indian origin who are now US Citizens can obtain Overseas Citizenship of India (OCI) which gives them the ability to work and live in India without any restrictions for their lifetime!

Coming to the big question- the dollars involved , Minocha says at present the company does not charge anything from the candidates. The fees are paid  by the employers –  part of it is payable upfront as a retainer and the balance on successful placement.

To another bottom line question -  how many candidates have landed a job in India through US2IndiaJobs, Minocha says, “We plan to place 50 people in our first year of operation, scaling this to 400 in year 2 and 1000 in year 3.”

Currently the company is working with three difference categories of clients Which include large global companies such as Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Amazon.com, Nokia, Pepsico; Indian companies with global ambitions or those expanding in India such as RPG Enterprises and established startups and pre-IPO companies funded by reputed VCs such as Sequoia Capital, Matrix Partners, Helion Ventures and others. 

Minocha figures that the company has made a headway in just a few months because they have  focused on a niche which has helped in getting a quick identity.“ On the candidate side we deal with executives who have work experience of about 10 years or higher. On the companies/jobs we cater to those that have a demand-supply gap or need skills that are not readily available in India.”

He highlights the fact that the need for their service definitely exists both on the candidate and employer side- ensuring a scalable and efficient delivery model as a path to success.
“Tapping into the alumni networks of premium schools and colleges has helped us to source suitable candidates while identifying and reaching out to the right companies has helped us to create the required number and quality of jobs,” he adds.
The future looks promising. As Minocha says, “We have a fairly ambitious plan to scale our operations in terms of our team size, number of candidates as well as number of jobs/employers. We are also being asked by our clients to help them in finding suitable talent in other countries so we will need to devise our roll out strategy to meet that demand.”
Minocha co-founded another KPO/BPO company focused on the Financial Services space in 2001 and ran it till late last year. Previously,  he spent a couple of years at Infosys Technologies in sales and business development. His initial career was in sales, marketing and general management in the consumer products space at Unilever and Perfetti Van Melle (an Italian confectionery company)in India and other International markets including South Africa and Brazil.
He is an MBA from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad and has an Engineering degree from Delhi College of Engineering.
Nandini has a Masters in Business Economics and a Bachelors in Economics from Delhi University.