This College Dropout's Startup Teaches Coding And Employs Indians In High Pay Global IT Jobs

India is a land of immense potential, with the highest number of young people in the world, ready to take on the different challenges of the workforce.

Representative Image: Reuters

However, where India lacks is in generating better employment opportunities to place enough young people in jobs for them all.

Many are also skilled despite not having fancy degrees from renowned institutes across the globe. However, as said by many tech giants including Apple CEO Tim Cook, ¡°You don't need a college degree for success, as 50 percent Apple hires don¡¯t have one.¡±

Ayush Jaiswal, just like Tim Cook, doesn't believe a skill can be determined effectively based on a certificate. Seeing the potential possessed by Indian programmers, he really wants Indian developers to flourish, to get the true worth of their potential. And that¡¯s why he started Pesto Tech -- a startup that trains skilled programmers and developers in India and connects them with companies across the world that not only gives them the necessary exposure but also get paid similar to their potential.

Ayush Jaiswal: Pesto Tech

We got in a conversation with him to know more about his enterprise and how he decided to form the startup and what made him think of creating a startup in this domain.

Enterprising since early in college

Ayush told that he always aspired to be en entrepreneur and even started his first startup within first few months of his college -- but couldn¡¯t give it enough time and it ended up shutting down. But he felt that the reason that enterprise failed was because he didn't give it enough time. So for his next project, he quit his college and nearly spent two years bankrupt at a co-working space called 'Innov8'. He tried many things but none worked in his favour.

Meeting Andrew Linfoot, Pesto¡¯s Co-founder

However, then he met Andrew. He describes how the idea of Pesto came to life stating, ¡°Andrew was working late at the co-working space. I was curious about him so I started a conversation. It turns out Andrew was just a foreign version of me. Andrew started telling stories about startups with plenty of late nights and whiteboarding. He told stories about working alongside some of the most brilliant people in the world. He told me about software engineering in the US. I felt this emotion arise in me that was akin to an insane sense of urgency. I convinced him to do a test project with a US client and an Indian engineering team.¡±

Indian Engineers for US tech companies

They started looking for the most skilled engineers in the nation he comments about their coding stills stating, ¡°They¡¯d start out writing code that was simply impeccable by Silicon Valley standards. Andrew and I quickly realized how good our engineers were. They were fluent in English, had computer science degrees and worked harder than most of Andrew¡¯s peers in Silicon Valley.

He further added, ¡°If they had US visas, they would easily get jobs at US tech companies. We couldn¡¯t get them visas but we could match them with US tech companies where they could work as full time, remote contractors. Clients loved it. It was just like hiring a remote employee in-house, only cheaper, faster and easier. We soon had more companies signed up, than we had engineers trained to offer. This is how Pesto was found.

Pesto Tech

The problem they¡¯re trying to solve

Ayush has witnessed the differences in the life of an engineer in India vs one in the US and the lack of opportunity for them to deliver their full potential. ¡°India is an IT leader in terms of the number of engineers. I believe if we can get every engineer to match the quality of engineers in Silicon Valley, we can become global leaders. If India wants to unlock its full potential, we need to empower our engineers with more opportunity. We need to value their intellectualism. We need to invest in making each engineer the best version of themselves, instead of focusing those resources on simply cranking out another engineer.¡±

Making a difference with professional guidance

When Pesto takes new people on board -- regardless if they¡¯re freshers or experienced engineers -- they¡¯re offered a proper training to fine-tune their skills as per the expected standards. They undergo four weeks of classroom training followed by four weeks of practical training including another four weeks of open-source apprenticeship with Pesto¡¯s international partners.

Pesto Tech

According to Ayush, ¡°India is an IT leader in terms of the number of engineers. I believe if we can get every engineer to match the quality of engineers in Silicon Valley, we can become global leaders. If India wants to unlock its full potential, we need to empower our engineers with more opportunity. We need to value their intellectualism. We need to invest in making each engineer the best version of themselves, instead of focusing those resources on simply cranking out another engineer.¡±

Generous payouts that keep employees happy

Ayush, with immense pride, also revealed how successful Pesto Tech has been, specifically pertaining to the payouts received by graduates. He said, ¡°Pesto registered an average success rate of 31 lacs per annum, our grads are getting placed and have received great offers of 45 lacs, 60 lacs and 72 lacs. We have also launched our new program few days back called Pesto Pro and applications we have received gives me the biggest satisfaction.¡±