Making grads interview ready in job mkt in India and overseas

Aiming high and the passion to do something different on his own forced him not to go back to Germany to complete his second year of MS in Mechanical Engineering. Ujwal Surampalli, who did B.Tech from Andhra university's College of Engineering, set up a startup for incubation at Nasscom 10K warehouse in 2016 at Visakhapatnamin. He started his firm InterviewBuddy by pooling up Rs 15,000 from his savings. His confidence, will power and determination to do something different in the highly competitive job market has made his company achieve a turnover of Rs 1 crore. Ujwal Surampalli in an exclusive interview with BIZZ BUZZ said that his company aspires to spread its presence by offering training for individual candidates and conducting interviews on behalf of big companies.

InterviewBuddy is a SEO first website which drives traffic and generates user interest/queries organically. We focus on a single service offering which is interviewing as a service

The startup ecosystems are largely present in the metropolitan cities currently and I feel that the same should be replicated across tier-II cities too both by the active participation of the community and the government

How has InterviewBuddy turned into a successful venture? What is your plus point in the interview market?

Almost about 99 per cent of all the sales and the clientele of InterviewBuddy have been generated through word of mouth. This might sound too good to be true, but that has been the case with InterviewBuddy and is working really well. This can be attributed to the fact that we do offer stellar mock interviewing experience to each and every user candidate – either a direct user or a partner's user.

No two people have the same personality and aptitude and interviewers assess the individual in an actual interview. We replicate the same in our mock interviews which very much is our specialty. Without this, the service would come across as generic without delivering the right value and worth to the end user. Our motto is to deliver a stellar world class interviewing experience each and every single time to every user. Replicating this is not easy and is our USP which any competition would find challenging.

From a startup to a company with Rs1-crore turnover how was your experience?

Starting up is definitely a roller coaster ride – though it may sound platitude, it is a hard hitting reality where things seem to fall apart and/or you are unable to reach your targets. All these could be owing to multiple factors like the time of entry or launch, market conditions and acceptance, network, client/user requirements, the ability to deliver, product readiness, etc. There are several near-death experiences that I as a startup founder had and have to endure in order to pursue what I truly believe in and offer. I keep reminding myself of the adage - smooth seas never make you a good sailor and that the ups and down of the journey as a startup founder will make you a better business leader.

I started young right out of college and the challenge I faced a lot was to get taken seriously especially when you are new in the market and do not have any marquee clients on board yet. Making the first few sales and getting the appointments for across the table meetings seemed like herculean tasks. Our product and service which led to word of mouth and the organic growth that we have now.

Are you facing any problem in getting domain experts?

Initially it was difficult to get industry experts onboard as online interviewing in itself was a new concept to a majority of the people. But once the word got out, the reverse happened – we have domain experts applying to us now showing their interest and the desire to work with us. We have internal audits and scoring rubrics to keep a track on the quality and effectiveness of the sessions being delivered to ensure quality throughout.

Was there any impact on your operations due to Covid-19 pandemic?

The whole concept of working from home turned out to be quite new and uncharted for some of our employees and it took some time for them to get used to drilling and keeping work and family time separate. But things quickly got back into groove and resumed seamlessly. We always had a backup person and I would say there hasn't been a deep impact on our day to day operations. However, during the first wave when there were a lot of layoffs in the industry, we noticed minor dips in our numbers, but this was just for about a couple of months during the nationwide lockdown in 2020.

How is your cloud-based video platform increasing its presence abroad by getting overseas clients?

InterviewBuddy is a SEO first website, which drives traffic and generates user interest/queries organically. We focus on a single service offering which is interviewing as a service. On top of the expert driven mock interviews, we do offer technical screening interviews for corporates and staffing agencies through our InterviewBuddy Pro platform. This is a very cost effective service as there are no HR overhead costs for the companies and is a pay as you go service.

We work with the client in understanding their requirements, hiring metrics/parameters and screen their potential candidates accordingly. As we come with a fresh set of eyes, the issue of interview bias too is eliminated ensuring a fair and clean short-listing process. We also auto-record each and every interview and a detailed feedback report from our industry experts is shared with clients for record keeping and decision making.

How do you want to scale up further? Any projections for the future?

We are building InterviewBuddy to become a trusted brand for all things related to interviewing. Our InterviewBuddy pro platform is a unified browser-based white labelled video interviewing platform for assessments, video resumes/profiles, live one to one interviewing, multi-party interviewing, custom reports/assessments, reporting, screening and sharing/collaboration. Our next big goal is to double down on international sales and clientele especially in the education and skill development sector. We currently have clients based out of the USA, UK, Russia, Switzerland and Germany. We are also in some late stage talks on on-boarding potential international clients.

At present, how do you find the startup ecosystem in India in general and Andhra Pradesh in particular?

The startup ecosystem in India is currently experiencing its zenith and is on a whole new level than what it was in the last decade and we are seeing many unicorns being born lately. The startup ecosystems are largely present in the metropolitan cities currently and I feel that the same should be replicated across tier-II cities too both by the active participation of the community and the government. We do not see major startups yet from Andhra Pradesh and the startup ecosystem too is at a very nascent stage here.

Among startups many are grounded with tremendous enthusiasm. However, there is a high percentage of premature death. What is required to improve the success rate?

Many of them seem to startup with just a single agenda which is to raise lots of funds and not focus on their USP or the problem that they are trying to solve. Next, accept rejection from – potential clients, users, team, stakeholders and the market in general. All these combined will help the startup persevere and thrive.