Business
CEO of Sankey Solutions, Suhas Patil, sheds a light on how they built a multi-million-dollar business by hiring graduates from rural Maharashtra
Sankey Solutions is a Mumbai based start-up founded by Suhas Patil and Sandeep Patil in 2015. It was recently recognized at #51 rank under Asia Pacific’s top 500 fastest growing companies for the year 2020. It was also awarded as India’s top 7th fastest growing companies by deloitte for the year 2020. This recognition spotlights the growth rate as 1101% of this expeditiously growing organisation.
What makes Sankey Solutions successful?
Suhas Patil: Among many IT companies who are focused on building “skilled” talent to innovate, Sankey Solutions established itself in short amount of time as “different DNA” company by leveraging mindset and design thinking as core differentiator to tech innovation. Company represents a paradigm shift in building a tech engineering services company out of India where mindset triumphs over experience, learning over skillset and passion over pedigree. Company where even entry level graduates are trained to think like architect, think like entrepreneur and think like designer (& then like programmer). Through this new DNA, Sankey with 25-year-olds is building transformational technologies and platforms for firms across India, Singapore, UK etc. We are on journey to build next generation IT Company and we believe our approach is what will help India IT sector to move up in value chain and enable us to excel in “Innovation Game” than in “Outsourcing Game”.
How this Mumbai start-up built a multi-million-dollar business by hiring graduates from remote towns in Maharashtra?
Suhas Patil: Sankey Solutions has followed an unconventional method of recruitment by attracting and grooming raw talent from rural and non-urban markets in Maharashtra. We have been recruiting employees based primarily around passion for technology and ability to learn, rather than academic credentials or experience. Our impressive growth story has proved that there’s a vast pool of talented workforce available in non-urban areas and it pays to hire people with a chip on their shoulder with a hunger to prove themselves.
What makes Sankey Solutions stand out in a crowded IT sector by hiring tech designers rather than programmers?
Suhas Patil: As technology continues to evolve in an exponential way, low end coding will soon be replaced by low-code & no-code platforms but tech designers will continue to shape innovative product development efforts. At Sankey Solutions, each developer is trained to think like an architect, work on full-stack technologies and instilled with a technology agnostic approach. Sankey is founded on strong belief that Tech Innovation is a mindset game and not a skillset game. We aspire to build a high paced learning organization which enables our clients to achieve competitive edge through interdisciplinary skillsets and highly agile problem-solving mindset.
How does Sankey Solutions use innovation/learning culture as a strategic differentiator?
Suhas Patil: We believe in the fact that a company’s culture is its only truly unique identifier. Rotating people often as a policy, keeping curiosity as metrics of performance measurement, giving opportunities to people based on talent/passion rather than skills were some of the many initiatives where company has taken unconventional approach for building learning culture. Learning is not “cost”, it is “DNA” or “IT IS HABIT” is what we believe. We hire primarily around behaviours like ability to learn, attitude and not on skills, academic credentials or experience. Our focus is on enriching career growth of each Sankian by giving them an ahead-of-time platform to enhance their skillset, significantly enabling them to play a major role in our quest to become the best Solution Engineering company in the world. We don’t follow a hierarchy rather Sankians are assessed based on certain set behaviours. Our employee peer-to-peer learning program, Sharing Katta has made our organization truly agile and collaborative. By creating a learning culture, we have transformed Sankey into an innovation lab which enables us to think outside the box and reinvent how we use technology to unlock its hidden potential.