from tier ii and lower schools for a pretty straightforward reason he couldnt afford to recruit from the top league over time though he realised he was getting much more than he had bargained for they had fire in the belly these ordinaries made us extraordinary says 37year old sharma apart from a handful of iitiim grads over the years paytm has unearthed talent from lesser known institutes such as graphic era university and dit university in dehradun amit sinha vicepresident of business and people at paytm is convinced that hiring from prestigious institutions has its limitations hes learnt that through experience not a good one after hiring senior honchos with stellar cvs and fancy designations in india inc we dont want trophy hires people who may have been chief of product or chief of technology somewhere they may be best elsewhere but not for us says sinha who did his btech from ismdhanbad and an mba from iimcalcutta talent and stickiness paytm is one of a clutch of newage companies etailers appmakers software product firms and the like that are going beyond the iitiim choices for recruitment and not just because these hires are more affordable recruitment from lesserknown institutions helps companies tap a more diverse talent pool access talent thats willing to go that extra mile to make up for their lack of degree and pedigree and get on board a workforce thats largely from smaller cities which means they tend to be willing to go through the grind to get ahead one such startup thats betting big on noniitiim graduates is voonik a personal shopping app cofounded by sujayath ali in august 2014 ali did his mba f rom indian school of business hyderabad and completed his bachelor of engineering from mepco schlenk engineering college in sivakasi in tamil nadu voonik has never been to any iit or iim for hiring but that hasnt stopped seven grads from the premier schools from joining up for ali the guiding beacon when hiring is stickiness and this comes from spreading the hiring net across farflung areas they iit and iim grads are not loyal and are constantly looking out for other opportunities he contends adding that for voonik tier ii candidates have performed better than iitiim grads this gave us the confidence to go exclusively to tier ii colleges adds ali voonik hires from colleges that city slickers are unlikely to have heard of kumaraguru engineering college in coimbatore tamil nadu audisankara college of engineering in nellore andhra pradesh gitam school of technology in hyderabad telangana and sree vidyanikethan engineering college in tirupati andhra pradesh our culture stresses on being fundamentally nice to each other and that comes naturally to tier ii recruits claims ali if voonik is looking for stickiness franklyme looks for attitude cofounded in april 2014 by iitdelhi alumnus nikunj jain franklyme enables users to get answers from celebrities and experts through video selfies of a headcount of over 100 the