Campus connect: Startups team up for CMO Hunt

Companies believe that apart from identifying the right talent, the exercise will increase visibility and enhance employee brand image among students.

Do startups need a different breed of marketing professionals? Probably they do.

Marketing at startups is a different ball game altogether. There are no mass media spends and these new-age companies try to leverage the power of the Internet, telephony and social media to their optimum, to quickly grow organically. In fact, several of them are successful, yet have not spent anything on customer acquisition.

Finding the right marketing person is a challenge which many of these companies face.

Creative youngsters, who would fit the bill are currently somewhere in the 30,000-odd colleges in the country. The biggest irony, though, is that they themselves aren’t aware of their valuable skill sets which any startup would die for.

To fill the talent gap, the new-age marketer has brought in several of these startup companies together to hunt for the future CMO.

Led by Chalkstreet.com, an online marketplace for learning, these companies have launched a talent hunt programme — The Start-up CMO Hunt.

Some of the companies, which have joined this programme, are Local Oye, Furlenco, Capital Float and Hive Minds.

“We decided to solve the problems of all the startups together, by promoting this contest, where we leverage our nationwide connect with more than 800 colleges. We identify the most creative guys from these colleges and connect them with the employers to create a win-win opportunity for both the parties,” says an executive from Chalkstreet.

The contest is open to students of varied backgrounds and colleges, including engineering, B-schools and even some of the select degree colleges. The participating students will get to showcase their skills by working on solutions to real-world business issues.

The participants will undergo three rigorous rounds designed to identify innovative minds. In the first round, they will need to submit a detailed marketing strategy for distributing a learning app amongst a large audience. In the second round, participants will get their hands dirty and implement the solutions they proposed in a real-world scenario where they have to market the product. In the third round, finalists will be grilled in a day long ‘Marketing Marathon’ with different marketing challenges posed in quick succession.

Apart from the pre-placement offer, the winning team will take home a grand prize of Rs 100,000.

The companies believe that in addition to identifying the winning team, the contest will also be an exercise in gaining visibility and enhancing employee brand image among students.

The contest will roll out on August 26 and run for 25 days.