Twenty-seven-year-old Animesh Mishra works as Senior Consultant at Stowe Research India, a company that primarily makes claim processing software. He leads a team of six coders at present. This is a starkly different picture from last year, when he was coding alone.
“The company has more work today and hence we need more coding hands,” Mishra said.
India’s software sector has grown and more internet-based start-ups are being funded, leading to high demand for coders, who turn programme designs created by software architects into instructions that a computer can follow.
Top engineering institutions too are flooded with offers from start-ups looking for coding talent.
Harveen S Bedi, EVP & Business Head, Quadrangle, an offline executive search business, said: “The average salary of a coder at a product company has gone up by 30-40 per cent this year. Product companies such as Microsoft and Ola usually seek high-end, hard core coders. A coder with 3-years experience at such a company, who was getting Rs. 7-10 lakh a year, is now getting Rs. 11-14 lakh.”
InfoEdge, which also runs Naukri.com, owns Quadrangle. Bedi attributes this trend to more start-ups getting funded and the IT sector getting more contracts from overseas.
According to the 2015 edition of Monster Salary Index Report on the Indian IT sector, the country saw a ten-fold increase in the venture funding that went into internet companies in 2014 compared to 2013. More than 800 internet start-ups got funding in 2014 compared to 200 in 2012.
“Companies are ready to pay good packages to a good coder as they cannot waste money or time training average coders. Hence, a student with good knowledge or from a top institution gets multiple job offers,” said Anushray Gupta, Co founder, Coding Blocks, a private coaching start-up.
V Babu, Advisor, Training and Placement, IIT Madras, said: “There has been a 5-10 per cent rise in salaries for coders over the years. Top companies such as Microsoft, Google organise coding competitions and winners of such competitions, even if they are not from Computer Sciences background, are directly shortlisted for interviews during campus placements.”
Image courtesy: thehindubusinessline
