Connecting. Colleges. Companies: Debolina Dutta and D V R Seshadri

IMB 429
DEBOLINA DUTTA AND D V R SESHADRI
COCUBES.COM
CONNECTING. COLLEGES. COMPANIES
COCUBES.COM
Harpreet Grover and Vibhore Goyal exited the meeting hall at a business resort in Gurgaon, where the annual review
of CoCubes performance had just been completed with its young, exuberant but rapidly growing team. Both were
looking back with pride about the venture they had created ground up over the last 5 years and felt they had much
reason to celebrate. Starting from a modest capital and just the two of them, they presided over a large and growing
organization with over 100 people. Their company, CoCubes had become the gold standard in the campus
recruitment space and was driven by the vision to ensure that every student in the country received an equal
opportunity to build a career. Although their focus was on engineering colleges and Tier II/Tier III cities and towns,
they were exploring ways to broad base their “catchment” area, to cover various other types of colleges including
non-professional graduate colleges and MBA schools. Driven by a deep desire to create equity in the society by
enhancing employability opportunities, they had come a long way from their modest beginnings. Yet, dark clouds
loomed large in the horizon.
The market opportunity that they fortuitously bumped into was increasingly being seen by others also as a “pot of
gold” and these new entrants were rapidly trying to colonize that space, with their own unique and innovative
business models. The primary challenge before the duo was how they could create a “shattering value proposition”
for the college students, who would be using their productized services to enhance their employability opportunities.
If they could crack this puzzle, the colleges would be obligated to continue to subscribe to CoCubes’ offering,
notwithstanding the incentives being offered by various emerging competitors to switch over. Another threat was to
ensure that campuses did not end up bypassing CoCubes, with a view to save costs, once CoCubes made the
connections between the campuses and companies.
Both of them were sanguine enough to realize that their whole business model was contingent on enhancing the
interest of companies to move away from their obsession of hiring from metros and Tier I cities, and broad base
their catchment area to encompass less-known colleges from the rural and semi-urban hinterland of the country.
Their discussions during the day and decisions the management team now took were vital in figuring out the road
map for their market offerings going forward.
HISTORY OF THE COMPANY

CoCubes.com has been India’s largest student engagement and campus hiring platform. The team consisted of 100
people with operations and technology based out of Gurgaon, and having a pan-India sales presence. It was venture
funded, growing at an average 525% year on year.
The word CoCubes derives its origin from the first two alphabets of the three words – “Connecting Colleges (to)
Companies.” The company focused on bringing all of India’s 26,000+ colleges online on a single platform for
campus recruitment and engagement. In 2013, the company worked with 2000+ colleges, 400+ corporate clients,
and over 1000,000 students through its platform.
Founded in 2007, the differentiator in the company’s business model was that while all popular online portals
provide a “company to individual connection”, CoCubes brought a “company to college” connection by bringing
colleges and all its students online. CoCubes provided separate logins for each college’s training and placement
Debolina Dutta, IIM Indore, and DVR Seshadri, Professor of Marketing, IIM Bangalore, prepared this case for class discussion. This case is not
intended to serve as an endorsement, source of primary data, or to show effective or inefficient handling of decision or business processes.
Copyright © 2013 by the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore. No part of the publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or
by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (including internet) – without the permission of Indian Institute of
Management Bangalore.
This document is authorized for use only in Dr. Neha Sadhotra's B2B Marketing. at Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS) from Dec 2021 to Jun 2022.
CoCubes.com connecting. colleges. companies Page 2 of 20
officer and for all students of the college interested in placements. Moreover, the student data was authenticated by
the college. All critical parameters pertaining to students (academic, college, branch, year, etc.) were uploaded by
the respective college's training and placement officer onto the indigenously developed online system which auto-
generated students’ logins.
The company won many accolades in 2012 from the industry (Exhibit 1) for their innovative and value delivering
business model, including the RASBIC Award for Innovation in Recruitment in 2011, apart from being regularly
written about in the news media. Harpreet S. Grover and Vibhore Goyal, co-founders of CoCubes.com were
recognized as one among the 25 Hottest Young Entrepreneurs in India, 2011, in addition to receiving a number of
other prestigious awards. CoCubes.com contributed to enhancing employability by engaging with multiple partner
companies and by building efficient tools and content to help students secure the right job.
OPPORTUNITY LANDSCAPE
According to the All India Council for Technical Education, India produced 401,791 engineers in the year 2003–
2004, 35% being computer engineers. The churn out of engineering graduates increased in 2004–2005 to 464,743,
of which 31% were computer engineers. As per NASSCOM, in 2009–2010, there were over 550,000 engineering
students who graduated from various institutions. Similar trends were seen in China. This growth in engineering
graduates in India and China was in stark contrast to the 70,000 and 10,000 engineers produced by the United
States 1 and whole of Europe, respectively.
More than nine million students (all streams) graduated every year in India and less than 25–30% were employable. 2
The issue of the education versus employability gap was an increasing area of concern for both educational
institutions and for the industry. Industry experts attributed the gap to lack of industry-relevant education and the
inability by graduates to apply the theoretical knowledge gained. Educational institutions felt that many students
lacked the basic grounding (in terms of their primary and secondary education gained before coming to the colleges)
and faced challenges in communication. Additionally, many universities were locked into curricula, which had lost
its relevance or had not been updated and which was a bureaucratic nightmare to change. Clearly, for the students to
be industry-ready and to be more “employable”, they needed to introduce judicious mix of relevant courses,
application orientation, basic grounding in core engineering concepts, and basic soft skills.
Although, India had the advantage of the demographic dividend, on the under-graduate enrolment ratio, 3 it stood at a
meager 12% as opposed to China’s 42%. However, this trend was increasing and enrolment ratios were poised to
grow tremendously. Although the number of colleges was increasing rapidly, it was envisaged that the number of
students would also increase. The key to sustaining this would be to provide suitable placements for students. A
NASSCOM report has indicated that employability 4 of graduates in the IT industry was only 25%. A similar low
hiring percentage of employability was being witnessed in the non-IT sectors also, where students were found to
possess knowledge and skills but these did not relate to industry requirement. This provided significant opportunity
for increasing employability through intermediaries, who could provide the connectivity bridge to industry and also
provide services for assessment and skill upgradation.
The Indian IT industry witnessed a phenomenal growth during the period 2000–2010. It employed around 500,000
people in 1999 and in 2012, it directly employed 2,500,000 people. As per NASSCOM, the workforce in Indian IT
industry was expected to touch 30,000,000 by 2020. In 2011–2012, there was a plan by the Indian IT industry to
recruit nearly 250,000 engineering graduates from various campuses.
In 2013, many top organizations were giving much importance to campus recruitment. Organizations wanted to hire
and retain the best possible talent in order to gain competitive edge over their rivals. During the recruitment process,
a company employed various selection tools to ensure that it hired the right person for the right job. Not only
engineering colleges but also degree colleges sought to attract companies to their campuses for campus recruitment.
Top-notch IT & ITES companies were also hiring non-engineering graduates such as B.Sc. and BCA graduates as
also diploma holders. For instance, in 2010–2011, Infosys made offers to 1,000 non-engineering graduates. The
1
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/showpub.cfm?TopID=2&SubID=18
2
http://www.aspiringminds.in/docs/national_employability_report_engineers_2011.pdf
3
http://www.dreducation.com/2012/10/china-india-statistics-data-facts-higher-education.html
4
Employability refers to a person's capability for gaining and maintaining employment (Hillage & Pollard, 1998)
average compensation package offered to them was INR 218,000 per annum. Similarly, TCS was recruiting
commerce graduates for software development. Wipro Technologies had a well-established and long running
“WASE” program, through which it hired B.Sc. graduates and locked them in for a period of 4 years through an
integrated week-end M.Sc. program in computer science from BITS, Pilani, a premier educational institute in North
India. The anticipated WASE hiring intake for the year 2011–2012 was expected to be 7,000.
CAMPUS RECRUITMENT PROCESS AND CRITERIA
Eligibility Criteria for Entry Level Positions

Each company recruiting through campus had its own eligibility criteria in terms of age, qualifications, year of
graduation, percentage marks scored in Class X and Class XII, Under Graduate/Post Graduate studies, etc. Many
organizations defined an academic minimum aggregate cut-off for entry level positions. Additionally, the candidates
should have less than 2 years of gap in their academic career. There should be no outstanding arrears in terms of
subjects/papers to be completed.
There was an elaborate filtration through each stage of the selection processes, that is, aptitude test, group discussion
and personal interview, with elimination at each round. The average campus intake has been steadily growing over
the last few years (barring a slowdown during 2009, caused by the recession) and has been primarily fuelled by
hiring by IT firms. This necessitated creation of mammoth hiring departments (hiring engines) within these firms.
Most IT firms visited multiple colleges based on their “day” slots. The day slot depended on the relationship of the
company with the college, number of students recruited during the previous years, average annual compensation
offered (which varied from INR 250,000–400,000).The total annual engineering campus hiring numbers varied from
2,000 for a relatively small IT services firm to over 15,000 for the IT majors (such as TCS, Infosys, Wipro, and
Cognizant). For the typical IT major that was annually hiring over 10,000 students pan-India, a visit by the
recruiting team to an engineering college required 4–5 technical and HR panels, working in parallel, to be present on
campus on the day of the interview, which would typically result in selection of 25–50 students, depending on the
day slot. On an average, these companies visited 60–80 engineering colleges, irrespective of the numbers they were
recruiting, in order to continue to keep and strengthen their existing and new campus relationships.
With a day earlier and a day after the campus date spent on travelling to and fro the college campus, the recruitment
process was fairly time-consuming. In 2011, the average cost per interviewing panel for travel was INR 12,000 and
stay per night was approximately INR 3,000. In 25% of the instances, the engineering college campuses provided
support for boarding and lodging.
If the recruiting company availed the services of specialized assessment partners such as Meritrac, Eduquity, etc.,
the normal cost of each assessment was INR 100 per student assessed. If the company administered its own
assessment, which was usually based on pen and paper, with answers being checked through stencil-based answer
keys; it delayed the short-listing of candidates by a day, apart from being prone to errors. The average number of
students assessed was approximately 200 on Day-Zero and Day-1 slots.
Most of the members of the interviewing panels were from mid-management level, with an average annual cost to
company of INR 1,500,000. Most IT companies struggled to obtain sufficient numbers of members in each of the
multiple panels to participate in the campus recruitment activity, as these managers were involved in regular project
deliverables and found it difficult to be away from their regular work for 2–3 days. Campus recruitment
participation was not one of the key deliverables for them in their key result areas (KRAs) and hence was not part of
their performance appraisal for most panel members. Apart from this, with regular work piling up, most managers
were reluctant to take on this additional responsibility.
For non-IT company clients, while the numbers of students recruited was a fraction of that hired by the IT giants, the
process was similar. In these companies, the number of campuses visited varied from 10–20, for an average total
intake of 30–50 engineer trainees. The disproportionate number of campus visits was attributed to the perceived
relatively poor quality of students seen during the previous year. This number also depended on the follow-up and
persuasiveness of the college’s campus placement relations officer and in a few instances, internal recommendations
from alumni who were part of the senior management.
PLACEMENT CHALLENGE FACED BY THE COLLEGES

Education has been emerging as a high-growth business sector. Primary education has been compulsory and free and
provided by the government for the masses, in addition to several thousands of private schools, especially in large
and mid-sized cities and towns, catering to the relatively affluent population. However, the quality of this basic
education, especially in the government schools was dubious. With the exception of private schools in large and
mid-sized cities and towns, schooling in the hinterland and vast interior areas suffered from severe lack of facilities
and poor teachers. The quality of schooling rapidly deteriorated from district-level schools to village schools.
Pranjal Dubey, who had left a lucrative job with SAP to open an educational institute at his village close to Dewas,
Madhya Pradesh in the heart of India, summarized the extent of these problems.
The gap between the rural and urban students is phenomenally stark. Apart from the basic lack of
infrastructure, the rural students suffer from a tremendous inferiority complex and lack of self-
belief. What compounds the problems is the lack of awareness of options and the best way to raise
their socio-economic status. Parents of ill-advised students often end-up selling their land, their
only source of income, in order for their children to acquire degrees, with the ultimate aspiration
of getting good jobs. Little do they know that many of the colleges where their children may end
up joining have serious issues with regard to quality of education and that the graduates of many
of these colleges are far from being employable, a glaring contrast to their counterparts graduating
out of urban colleges. Even if they get jobs (often in big cities), they are unable to deal with the
culture shock they face in the cities. When they return to their village, they feel that they are too
educated to work in the fields and hence cannot find a job in the village. This reinforces a vicious
belief within the rural youth that education cannot take them far. This is not withstanding the
tremendous challenge that a rural graduate faces in getting the first job.
Dr. Piyush Pandey, the Principal of two engineering colleges in Chattisgarh, spoke on the challenges of
employability of his students.
We’ve recently signed up with CoCubes for our newer Engineering College at Durg, but not for
our older college at Raipur. The (Raipur) college has been in existence for 25 years and is fairly
well-established within Chhatisgarh. While approximately 50–60% of the batch was placed
through the companies visiting the campus, the rest either went for higher education or got placed
in the large industrial belt in and around Chhattisgarh. So, there is no need for CoCubes in this
college. However, for the newer college at Durg, with an intake of 360 students, we needed help to
ensure some degree of placement activity. Many companies refused to come to the campus until at
least a few batches have graduated. Additionally, local industry is currently not that supportive, as
we have yet to build our credibility here. CoCubes offers these students a pan-India opportunity
for jobs. Maybe, in future if the placements go well, we may not need to avail the services of
CoCubes.
GENESIS OF THE BUSINESS IDEA

Harpreet’s uncle, was a training and placement officer at an engineering college in Punjab. In 2006, during a visit to
Delhi, he complained to his nephew Harpreet that he spent much time and money traveling to metro cities, visiting
companies, and persuading them to come over to his college for campus placements. Companies would promise to
visit but never did. One of the reasons for companies not showing up after promising to do so, was the low visibility
and image that companies had about many of the colleges. Harpreet also visited this college for a guest lecture on
invitation and realized that students in Tier II/III cities had much potential, but did not know much about the
opportunities that awaited them.
Harpreet discussed this problem and possible opportunity in this space, with Vibhore, his friend of many years.
Together they concluded that if these students were given the right visibility and access to information, it would be a
win-win for the college, the companies, and of course to the students themselves. Students, even if they were lacking
in certain skills, were willing to learn and only required a platform to showcase their capabilities. The duo felt that
they had hit upon a potentially large business opportunity, if they could successfully find a way to address this basic
need.
In 2007, CoCubes.com came into being with a vision, “To ensure that each and every student in our country gets an
opportunity to build a career.” There were 29,000+ colleges, including graduate, diploma and engineering, as well as
post-graduate business schools, scattered across India and most of them were located in Tier II and Tier III cities. On
the other hand, recruiting companies were mostly from the metros and traditionally focused on talent acquisition
from metros. Consequently, there was a huge disconnect between suppliers and users of talent, and hence the duo
saw the need for an online and SMS-enabled interactive platform to connect colleges and companies. The major
benefit to companies was derived from colleges providing an authenticated and complete students’ database on a
single platform and providing colleges, companies and students requisite tools to interact. Such authentication could
not be provided by the company to individual interaction models, since individual candidates tend to greatly
exaggerate their credentials.
The founders of CoCubes.com were the first to spot the opportunity to leverage mobile and internet technologies in
India, to bridge this gap between companies and campuses, thereby smoothening the hiring process for both parties.
Thus CoCubes was born, with Harpreet taking on the role of co-founder & CEO and Vibhore as co-founder & CTO.
Said Harpreet:
The issue is that the total number of “good jobs” in the IT and ITES sectors each year in the
market are about 150,000 (NASSCOM survey) for fresh engineers. There would perhaps be
another 50,000 jobs for fresh engineering graduates in the non-IT sector. Today, in India, more
than a million students are graduating every year from engineering colleges. This essentially
means that a company seeking to recruit talent can afford to be choosy about whom to hire, in
which case they shouldn’t actually be paying to hire! They may pay to hire a skilled resource (i.e.,
a more trained person or a lateral hire) but surely not someone with generic engineering skills
(freshers). Simultaneously, the companies that seek to recruit are being squeezed on operating
margins and want to reduce costs. On the other hand, we have many colleges that have
mushroomed in the country. These colleges charge hefty fees from students, who have no option
but to pay. Most colleges operate on profit margins that are often upwards of 50% and have the
money to spend, but are unable to find worthwhile avenues to do so (beyond continually
upgrading buildings and playing the real estate game)! The continuance and reputation of these
colleges depends on their ability to help their students to find good jobs. So while it is the
campuses that always ‘‘need’’ placements for their students more than anyone else, in the existing
models of recruitment, companies were being charged for recruiting the students. We intuitively
understood that companies should not be paying for hiring at all, since the demand-supply
situation relating to potential campus recruits are skewed in their favor.
The shift in the payer from the companies to the campuses, triggered by this insight of CoCubes, had wide
acceptance in the industry. CoCubes started taking this model to the next level by enabling students to prepare better
and become more ‘‘employable,’’ by leveraging the medium that they were most comfortable with, viz., Internet
and mobile.
COCUBES DELIVERY MODEL

The CoCubes solution offered companies the opportunity to filter applicants online, based on prior set criteria
(academic performance in 10th and 12th classes and graduation, branch of study, gender, etc.) Many company clients
(nearly 97% of CoCubes clients) preferred to visit campuses, while availing CoCubes services. This hybrid approach
provided them with the reach and knowledge for effective recruitment on campus, while providing them with the
enabling technology and brand-building avenues with the student community. Such companies availed CoCubes
services to reduce the load on their recruiting departments. The value addition to these companies was cost reduction
and efficiencies in the pre-interview screening and filtering by the CoCubes platform.
The remaining 3% of companies preferred to directly meet at their regional offices, the students shortlisted after
filtering and preliminary assessments by the CoCubes platform. For these companies, there was a huge reduction in
costs of assessment and travel. Additionally, there was significant ease in arranging technical panels within their
own office premises.
CoCubes partnered with educational institutions as a “Partner College.” In this instance, the entire college was
brought online. It obtained technology-enabled tools from CoCubes to completely manage its placements,
employability initiatives, and to provide employment opportunities for its students. Alternatively, a college could be
an “Associate College” of CoCubes. In such an instance, the college was brought on-line via the CoCubes
technology platform and opportunities from companies who preferred to hire students from that college were
notified (Exhibit 2).
Partner colleges were those that paid CoCubes annual subscription for placement services. Non-partner or associate
colleges were those that did not pay CoCubes and had no relationship with CoCubes. Yet, sometimes a company
could request CoCubes to consider students for campus recruitment from a non-partner college, owing to the
existing relationship of the company with the non-partner college. CoCubes often accommodated this request in
order to strengthen its relationships with the company. In these instances, the associate colleges provided their
student database to CoCubes to include in their assessment and selection process. Thus, the students of associate
colleges got the opportunity to attend interviews only of a specific company and not interviews of all CoCubes’
empanelled companies.
Revenue generation from partner colleges was achieved through subscription fees. The average number of students
per engineering college eligible for recruitment was 300. CoCubes enrolled over 300 colleges under the partner
college program (paying clients). 5 Typically, a college was charged INR 1,000 (per final year student) and INR
1,500 (per pre-final year student) for lifetime logins. The price differential occurred on account of the longer
duration of access to online training to aid employability for the pre-final year students. The college also received an
administrator login which acted as the master login for the college. With this, the college management could manage
the entire placement process and student communication, through SMS and Internet. Apart from this, the college
could also monitor assessments and other learning initiatives by CoCubes.com.
For CoCubes to enrol a college, it generally required three meetings on an average over a period of a month. The
key decision-making stakeholders were the college trustees, principal, and placement officer. It took another month
for the CoCubes team to upload the student database onto the CoCubes online platform. After obtaining the demand
for campus recruits from various company clients, multiple assessment drives were planned and conducted by
CoCubes.
CoCubes required 7–10 days to plan and execute each drive. It took approximately 2 man days if the drive was
organized at a partner college. It took approximately 4 man days if the drive was an exclusive drive (i.e., in a non-
partner college or if the drive covered a significantly large pool of students from various nearby colleges). On an
average, each drive cost CoCubes -INR 40,000/- to conduct.
Drives conducted had a geographical spread, based on the client company’s specifications. The location of the drive
depended on access to nearby colleges and infrastructure to run the online assessments, etc., based on CoCubes'
previous experience. CoCubes had a venue checklist (Exhibit 3) that helped the team in selecting the venue for the
final selection process. CoCubes offered the choice of zeroing in on the venue to the hiring company and helped the
company to figure out which one was most suitable. This was important since the post-assessment process (Group
Discussion and Face-to-face interview) was also conducted at the same venue. Most drives were pooled campus
drives. CoCubes generally desisted from undertaking common recruitment drives for multiple companies, since the
eligibility criteria varied from one company to another. Also, if several companies selected the same talent, it was
bound to create much confusion and impact CoCubes’ credibility with its corporate clients.
The average applicant-to-offer conversion ratio varied between IT and non-IT organizations. For an IT company,
10% was the conversion in terms of candidates who were offered jobs vis-à-vis the number of candidates who
appeared for the test. Data indicated that for every 1,000 students assessed, approximately 350 cleared the
assessment. Out of these, 100 were offered jobs, while 70 actually ended up joining the company. For non-IT firms,
this ratio was found to be 7% on the offers made and 5% on those who joined the company. These percentages
varied depending on the season of hiring and the company brand.
5
See http://www.cocubes.com/student-offering.aspx#student-register
After each drive, the CoCubes platform provided extensive analysis of the conversion process (Exhibit 4). This
helped the company to plan its visits to the campus for the subsequent years, depending on the success and
conversion experienced from specific colleges/regions.
For the company clients, CoCubes had two primary offerings, that is, a mobile-enabled campus hiring and online
branding of companies in the campuses and engagement of the company with students on campus before and after
hiring. The former automated the entire hiring process except for the interviews as well as data collection from
colleges, posting jobs on the platform, student communication through SMSes and emails, taking in student
applications, online assessment, interview management, offer letter rollout, and analytics. The online branding
included a platform to engage with students (online polls, online contests, quizzes, articles, updates, videos, online
training, etc.) and allowed for the creation of a global profile page of the company client (micro site, on the lines of
www.cocubes.com/cognizant), which enabled students to “follow” the company micro site.
In 2012, the hiring solution including the online assessment was being offered free of charge to company clients. For
online branding and engagement with students after the release of offer letters to students, CoCubes charged a fee
from the company, which varied depending on the basket of engagement activities undertaken.
Companies could engage with students from across the country at the click of a mouse. This helped in creating high
mindshare as a preferred employer brand among prospective hires on campus. Additionally, this became a great way
to communicate and share more about the company, its people, culture etc., to a very clearly targeted audience, that
is, students in colleges (Exhibit 5). Through the engagement solution, organizations could also conduct polls,
contests, share training material, and complete the on-boarding processes for new hires.
CoCubes had 12 paying engagement partners including Cognizant (www.cocubes.com/cognizant), Accenture

(www.cocubes.com/accenture), and Capgemini (www.cocubes.com/capgemini). Companies paid an annual
subscription fee for engagement, which varied depending on the numbers being hired.
Figure 1
Campus hiring process on Cocubes platform
The entire campus process is illustrated in Figure 1. CoCubes engaged with company clients in such partnerships
through a dedicated single point of contact, designated as the account manager. The CoCubes account manager was
responsible for executing multiple activities for the company clients. After receiving the recruitment demand from
the company, the account manager finalized the campus drive plan and obtained the client’s approval. The company
client was supported in sending an introduction email to the colleges highlighting CoCubes being an online partner
for hiring. The account manager then contacted the associate or newly empanelled colleges for obtaining data (if not
already available on CoCubes platform), got the data cleaned and uploaded on the platform. Recruitment drives
were planned and created on the platform. If the company preferred a customized assessment, the account manager
obtained the question bank from the company to create an online test module (if different from CoCubes’ existing
tests.) With the acquisition of a leading skill assessment firm, SQuotient Analyzers, corporate clients of CoCubes
gained access to a large question bank covering both aptitude and technical questions. Corporate clients could use
this question bank for conducting assessments on campuses at zero cost. The assessment test for specific campus
drives was then scheduled. If the client had an assessment partner (in instances where the client chose not to deploy
the CoCubes online assessment module), CoCubes worked with the client’s assessment partner to obtain and upload
the assessment results. After the interview process, the account manager assisted the client in creating various offer
letter templates on the platform for issuing offers/letters of intent to selected students. Finally, support was provided
to the clients in obtaining standard analytics through the platform.
CoCubes had extensive knowledge and reach to educational institutions across India. This enabled them to offer
customized selection drives to company clients based on specific geographic needs (Exhibit 6a & b).
CoCubes additionally added value by publishing a unique examination calendar for all universities across India as
well as a knowledge series (mailer) that captured vital statistics of engineering colleges, lucrative drive destinations
(in terms of past success rate at each location), and logistic details for companies to plan their hiring.
The campus recruitment activity exhibited seasonality in both revenue generation and operational load. The highest
revenue booking from colleges (including a number of new sign-ups) was seen from July to December. The revenue
collections from colleges occurred mostly from November to January. Typically, the recruitment drive activity of
companies was largely spread out between October and March. During the non-peak season, CoCubes focused on
increasing sales to new prospects. Also, this was the period for new experiments to be tried in colleges. For instance,
during 2012, the focus was on increasing non-engineering graduate and MBA college enrolments. Additionally, the
CoCubes team worked with the companies to deepen its engagement with college students
(www.cocubes.com/accenture, www.cocubes.com/cognizant). One of the ways to deepen this engagement was
through delivery of employability enhancement initiatives (including customized skill trainings or soft skills training
6
programs) from partner companies . CoCubes also spent considerable effort and investment in a year-long learning
plan for students in its partner colleges spread across multiple career paths. 7
Each of the students studying in the final or pre-final year of the partner college of CoCubes received an individual
login to CoCubes site (Exhibit 7a). The student was able to view information about sample assessment tests
(Exhibit 7b), company drives (Exhibit 7c), and access various training modules.
INITIAL DAYS OF GROWTH

During its initial launch and subsequent few years, CoCubes faced some resistance on suggesting to the companies
to make their recruitment processes fully online. However, the savings in terms of time, effort and costs involved
were huge, which CoCubes could successfully demonstrate. CoCubes gradually gained acceptance from companies,
since they were focusing on cost effectiveness and quality of hires in their recruitment processes.
The first college that signed up with CoCubes was from Fatehgarh Sahib in Punjab. Subsequent enrolment of
colleges was through word-of-mouth (Exhibit 8). CoCubes progressively modified its business model. When the
company launched its business, the idea was to charge each enrolling college a fixed subscription fee and charge the
corporate on a per drive basis. However, over a three-year period, this revenue model continued to evolve. At the
start, while campuses had to pay INR 30,000 per year, companies had to pay INR 5,000 per campus. However, by
6
http://www.cocubes.com/guide/learning.htm, http://www.cocubes.com/college-offer.aspx#enhancing_employability
7
http://static.cocubes.com/document/cocubes_learning_plan_2012_13.pdf
2009–2010, CoCubes had reached INR 4.8 million in revenue and decided to change its revenue model, based on
feedback from its sales team. Since jobs were scarce, while the available talent pool was large, CoCubes decided to
charge colleges on a per student basis. To begin with, a rate of INR 500 per student was charged to the colleges for
the final year students. CoCubes later increased this to INR 1,000 and added the pricing for the pre-final year
students to increase the revenue funnel.
COMPETITION
There were a number of companies working on the campus recruitment space, but with differing value propositions
and strategies. The key competitors were:
• First Naukri.com: This has been a subsidiary of the leading recruitment portal in India, Naukri.com. The
business model was similar to the parent job portal. This allows the paying company client to search the
database of fresh graduates, screen and take the recruitment process forward. The students were allowed to
post their resumes free on this portal. There was no validation by the portal or the college in terms of the
information provided by the student. The portal also provided services of knowledge sessions, webinars,
assessment tests and various other career tools and advice to the students.
• MonsterCollege.com: This has been a subsidiary of Monster.com and operated on the same lines as First
Naukri.com. Both these portals augmented the sourcing funnel but did not reduce the operational effort for
campus recruitment.
• Shine.com: A subsidiary of the HT Media group, Shine.com also had an online portal on the lines of Naukri
and Monster. It offered industry information and career advice and allowed the students to apply for
specific roles and companies. The onus of screening and coordinating the interview process rested on the
recruiting company. Shine focused mainly on conducting job fairs for specific companies.
• Nicco Ventures: A business model similar to that of CoCubes was offered by Nicco Ventures Ltd., a
Kolkata-based firm. Pioneered by NICCO in 2001, its Entry Level Recruitment/Campus Hiring Services
(ELRS) offered Campus Recruitment and Fresher’s Hiring (essentially by providing an off-campus
database, with no on-line platform such as the one provided by CoCubes). ELRS’ main value proposition
was offering a “Hands-Free Recruiting Process” to the employer. This offering was free to organizations
for fresher hire and chargeable at a rate of INR 7,000 per candidate for hiring people with more than 1-year
experience. Revenue was mainly generated from the colleges on a per candidate model. ELRS claims to
have organized 1,050 recruitment events for over 525 company clients, through which more than 7,500
candidates received job offers. It offered the facility of design and development of HR and generic testing
tools/instruments. It offered these services to over 190 companies and rolled out testing processes for
approximately 71,000 candidates. The company claims to have established channels for multi-locational
complete recruitment process support in more than 42 cities/towns across India, with a potential to conduct
linear or parallel recruitment events. The key differentiator as compared to CoCubes is that this was a
completely off-line process and its major focus was the Eastern states of India.
• Aspiring Minds: This was one of the leading organizations in India in scientific assessments and talent
benchmarking. It focused on high-tech assessment tools that were useful to ensure recruitment of the right
people, and also to develop profile-wise employability benchmarks. Its core IP product, the AMCAT®
(India’s Largest Employability Test), was India’s first and only computer-based adaptive testing platform
taken by over 30,000 job aspirants every month. With a wide base of over 750,000 assessed talent
available, predominantly from the campus level, Aspiring Minds had also entered into the campus
employment space with a revenue model similar to CoCubes.
CoCubes estimates its market share as 10–15% of the relevant market, with 300+ engineering colleges having
signed up from a potential market base of about 2,800 engineering colleges. However, placement share in total
campus recruitment remained very small.
Service providers such as First Naukri, MonsterCollege, CoCubes, Aspiring Minds, etc., together accounted for 55%
of market penetration, in terms of college enrolment and student database access. Interestingly, there were quite a
few colleges who are clients of more than one service provider, since none of them were absolute replacements of
the others.
In addition to these players, there were collaborators, who offered complementary services. Some of them also
competed with CoCubes at some of the colleges.
THE SCENARIO IN 2012

CoCubes gained the acceptance of over 400 companies of varying size and scale, who hired through them from
campuses. This included large organizations in niche sectors as well as 4 of the top 10 IT companies in the country.
CoCubes clients loved the platform and the ease of use as well as the control it gave them in the recruitment process.
What appealed to companies was CoCubes’ knowledge and reach across campuses in India. CoCubes’ sales teams
were mapping every Tier II and Tier III towns and relentless in getting as many colleges online, which translated
into growth of its college enrolments.
Until 2011, CoCubes’ focus was only on engineering colleges. However, since 2012, CoCubes entered into the
graduate, MBA and diploma space, for specific clients. Over 2,000 colleges (engineering and non-engineering),
worked with CoCubes. Of these, over 300 colleges were paying partners who availed its technology, employability,
and employment solutions online. Interestingly, most of these colleges were situated in Tier II/III cities, which was
aligned to the company’s vision of providing equal opportunity to all students.
In 2012, there were nearly 4,000 business schools in India of which about 2,000 were approved by the All India
Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and 400 were unapproved private B-schools. Together, they had nearly
190,000 seats for a total pool of 350,000–400,000 MBA aspirants who took up the national and state-level MBA
entrance examinations. At an average, annual fees charged by these B-schools of INR 200,000, the total estimated
revenue for B-schools in India was INR 38,000 million. However, barring the top 20–30 institutions, most of these
colleges faced severe problems in placing their students. These institutes had the capability to pay higher
subscription charges. There was significant heterogeneity in the MBA courses as well, such as specialization in
Marketing, Finance, HR, Operations, etc. However, the number of MBA graduates who were hired by companies
was a fraction of that of engineering students hired.
All of this opened up a market size upward of over 26,000 colleges and over 4 million students for CoCubes to
address, albeit with a new set of challenges. The estimated size of this market in 2012 can be seen in Exhibit 9.
Given that it was the first entrant into this space as well as the first to use technology to solve the college recruitment
problem in a scalable manner, CoCubes retained the position of being the market leader in the campus hiring and
student engagement space. How could it consolidate and ensure future growth, given the set of challenges it was
facing?
WAY FORWARD
The opportunity landscape was huge and the achievement was gratifying. However, CoCubes faced several strategic
choices and its success going forward, was contingent on the company making the right choices.
Competition had noticed the opportunity first seen by CoCubes. What new value could CoCubes create? How could
they raise the bar continually so that CoCubes would continue to be a market leader in this space?
Apart from the emerging competition, there were many reported incidents of placement officers from the college
campuses who tried to reach out to the companies directly, requesting empanelment and promising “better support
and service.” Many of them assured top day slots on campus to the companies. Moreover, many colleges did not feel
that the services being provided by CoCubes were commensurate with the charges being levied. CoCubes needed to
demonstrate and communicate the value being delivered at these colleges. How could CoCubes increase the
stickiness with their paying customers? CoCubes’ revenue growth could be undermined if it could not succeed in
locking-in its paying customers. What should CoCubes do to make its offerings attractive to the students, so that
they would in turn put pressure on their colleges to subscribe to the services of CoCubes? This would mitigate the
threat of campuses migrating out of CoCubes platform once the connection of the colleges with companies was
established.
Many of the corporate clients were firm in their belief that high quality talent was available in the reputed top-100
institutes across the country. There was an inherent reluctance on the part of HR managers to hire engineers from
non-reputed and newer institutes, especially from smaller towns. What should CoCubes do to encourage more HR
managers to invest in talent from newer institutes? How could CoCubes change the mindset of HR managers and
make them agnostic to pedigree of students and instead make them focus on their potential irrespective of their
modest educational backgrounds?
CoCubes’ reach to the non-engineering colleges (other graduate courses) is not as extensive as that for engineering
colleges. The graduate space is over five times the size of the engineering colleges space and the workforce there is
available to hire at lower wages, and hence more attractive to companies. Although, there seemed to be some
emerging demand for non-engineering graduates, the charges that CoCubes levied to the engineering colleges
seemed to be very high for the non-engineering college segment. Direct campus recruitment without engineering
qualification was low in the industry and the conversion rate of B.Sc./B.Com. degree holders was far below the
engineering rate of 24%. Another issue which emerges is the lack of student database in the non-engineering
graduate space (student information extending beyond current enrolment to include high school performance, etc.).
None of the recruitment facilitating companies were able to crack this space owing to the lack of available database
of students in electronic format. Although this seemed to be changing with the non-engineering graduate colleges
taking initiative to open placement cells 8, these changes occurred at a slow pace. The non-engineering graduate
college segment posed multiple challenges, and given that CoCubes wished to grow at a brisk pace in this segment
as well, what could CoCubes do to build traction on both sides?
The basic gap in students, as per feedback from company clients, was found in the soft skills. There were already a
large number of small firms who were operating in this space, providing soft skill training to students. However,
each of them had their own methods of training, resulting in a great deal of variance in the training quality. Most of
them were local training outfits. Should CoCubes partner with them and have a consequent large variance in the
training quality? Or should CoCubes build/acquire its own training arm and operate this service throughout the year
at its partner colleges? Would this dilute its focus and take it away from its core competence?
Many of the existing company clients were asking for psychometric assessment to be provided along with aptitude
assessment, which was a standard offering of CoCubes. Each psychometric assessment cost CoCubes INR 1,000 to
outsource from third party vendors. CoCubes offered this option to the company clients, but charged them per
assessment at the same rate. CoCubes needed to evolve a rational pricing model for these add-on services. At one
extreme, there could be a company hiring a few students. At the other end, a large IT company may hire a few tens
of thousands of students, entailing screening a few hundreds of thousands of students.
As the founders of CoCubes sat around the bonfire in the Gurgaon offsite, there was a warm feeling both in their
bodies and minds of the major strides they made given their humble beginnings. Yet, there were challenges galore
facing them, and for their continued success, they needed to come up with fitting responses to these challenges.
Given their youthful ebullience and optimism, they decided to postpone addressing these big issues for another day.
For the moment, they were focused on savoring their success and enjoying their evening with a vigorous round of
Bhangra (folk dance of Punjab).
8
http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_placement-cell-will-open-at-gujarat-university_1363130
Exhibit 1
Accolades
Exhibit 2
CoCubes product offerings
Exhibit 3
Venue checklist
CoCubes.com Drive Venue Checklist
College Details Information

College ID 2232
Full Name of the College SSPNM College of Engineering
City Gurgaon
State Haryana
Complete Address 1731, Sohna Road, Sohna PO, GGN-122012
Distance from Airport 23 km
Distance from Railway Station 18 km
Travel/Bus Facility available for students of other participating
colleges (If needed, if college is in outskirts) Yes, across Delhi and Gurgaon
Mode of Transport to Reach Campus Private Transport
Internet Speed 21Mbps
Entire Online Test on Back up -Yes or No Yes
No. of Computers on Power Back up 350
Back up Time 1.5hrs
Total No. of Computer Systems for a Single Slot 350
Are Computers in 1 Building (If No, specify the number of buildings) 2 buildings
No. of Floors in 1 Building 4
No. of Labs Per Floor in 1 building 3
No. of Computers per Lab 60
Javascript Support on All Systems (Yes or No) Yes
Flash Installed on All Systems (Yes or No) Yes
Operating System (Windows, Linux) Windows
Internet Browser (Mozilla, Internet Explorer) IE 7
Canteen Facilities in Campus (Yes or No) Yes
Guest House Facility Available (Yes or No) Yes
Has College Hosted Any Large CoCubes.com Drive (1000 Footfall)?
Yes or No Yes
Venue Confirmation Mail Sent
Exhibit 3 (Continued)
Disclaimer:
Sufficient refreshment facilities should be available for students who would be traveling from different colleges in pool drives
Proper hygiene facilities should be maintained

Venue campus should support in providing dedicated team from the college as volunteers for (a) Verification of Hall Tickets
(b) Receiving Guests
When companies are traveling from different region, college should extend the support in finding accommodation and local
travel
Internet Explorer is the preferred browser
Exhibit 4
Campus event statistics and reports
Exhibit 5
Engagement through Facebook
Exhibit 6a
College enrolment and region-specific information
Exhibit 6b
College enrolment and region-specific information
Exhibit 7a
Student profile page and wall
Exhibit 7b
Sample assessment tests on student wall
Exhibit 7c
Company drive information and discussion on student wall
Exhibit 8
CoCubes revenue and college/company enrolment data
Year 2009 2010 2011 2012

Turnover in Indian Rupees 400,000 4,800,000 28,000,000 78,000,000
Net Profit -ve -ve -ve -ve
No. of Employees 6 22 35 85
15% in Engineering
Market Share NA NA 6%
colleges
No. of Offices 1 1 2 6
Paying Clients 5 25 154 300
Exhibit 9
Details of number of graduates and MBA graduates on 2013
Type of College Number of Number of students Average number of students

Colleges (graduating batch 2013) per college (graduating batch
2013)
Engineering Colleges 2973 841,018 280
Diploma Engineering Colleges 2563 843,439 330
Graduate ( BSc, BCom, BA) 19726 6,368,855 320
Colleges
MBA Colleges 3853 227,989 60
Total 29,115 8,281,301 990

Connecting. Colleges. Companies: Debolina Dutta and D V R Seshadri

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IMB 429

DEBOLINA DUTTA AND D V R SESHADRI

HISTORY OF THE COMPANY

CAMPUS RECRUITMENT PROCESS AND CRITERIA

Eligibility Criteria for Entry Level Positions

PLACEMENT CHALLENGE FACED BY THE COLLEGES

GENESIS OF THE BUSINESS IDEA

COCUBES DELIVERY MODEL

CoCubes had 12 paying engagement partners including Cognizant (www.cocubes.com/cognizant), Accenture

INITIAL DAYS OF GROWTH

THE SCENARIO IN 2012

CoCubes.com Drive Venue Checklist

College Details Information

Proper hygiene facilities should be maintained

Year 2009 2010 2011 2012

Type of College Number of Number of students Average number of students

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