Indian Firm SOLV Lures Tech Talent By Inviting Them To Hack Their Way Onto Its B2B Billboard Campaign

A digital billboard set up across major tech centres in India is encouraging developers to solve a puzzle in an unusual recruiting campaign from a B2B commerce firm called SOLV.

Running for several weeks this month in Bengaluru, including Manyata Tech Park this week, SOLV said the campaign would provide aspiring job seekers with a hashkey-based puzzle on a site called hackyourfuture.in. The site is linked to the digital billboards and those who complete it successfully will see their names displayed on the billboard as winners.

Besides the visible recognition of their victory on the billboard, SOLV said it will also give out cash prizes to those who complete its challenges.

On its regular web site, SOLV describes itself as a plafrom focusing on providing a range of services to small and medium-sized enterprises across India, from customer acquisition and financing to sourcing of supplies. It says it has already attracted more than 60 million firms across the country and its data analytics applications are based on blockchain.

“The talent that we are targeting will be directly responsible for building the foundation of our conversational commerce platform and make a real-world impact on SMEs across India,” SOLV CEO Nitin Mittal said in a statement. “For the Millennial techies, it’s an excellent opportunity to showcase their skills (in) real time.”

So far 600,000 technology professionals have taken part in the Hack Your Future challenge, SOLV said, including 200,000 that came directly from areas in which the billboards are displayed.