Visit any major Indian city these days and you’ll find Silicon Valley’s biggest guns hoping to woo India’s best and brightest to join their massive teams. Microsoft and Intel have offices in multiple cities. Accenture is hiring by the hundreds each month. IBM is making noise about its expansion there.

It’s 1999 all over again, except it’s happening in our mother country. To the legions of India’s elite educated engineers and entrepreneurs who came to Silicon Valley during the 1980s and 1990s and who solidified India’s role as a key player in the global economy, I say a most hearty “Thank you.”

To the fresh-faced graduates of India’s higher learning institutions, who might be lured by the glitz of working for a major global brand, I say: “Think twice.” Think twice because those who choose to enter the polished corridors of large established firms with the expectations of being coddled for life might be boarding the wrong boat.

The big brands may promise safety and stability, but they are less likely to fuel the current boom now being felt in Bangalore and Gurgaon, and even in the resurgent Silicon Valley. The lion’s share of job creation, wealth and innovation is coming—and will continue to come—from companies with fewer than 100 people on board. Furthermore, the real glory and the real rewards are to be found by working for these often-overlooked companies who are leaders in their market spaces. Big ideas come from the smallest places.

Speedera is certainly no Microsoft or Cisco, but it is the leader in India when it comes to on-demand distributing computing services. Companies like Speedera—which has successfully matured from the start-up phase into an established firm—offer a person the opportunity to move from “zero to hero” at lightning speed.
Not much chance of that happening to a young recruit at a Fortune 200 firm! That person will simply be a cog in a very large machine, their individual contribution likely to be overlooked, and diluted, if even noticed at all.
The next quantum leap in technology will instead come from nimble, agile companies that will introduce innovations into the marketplace at breakneck speeds. But the path to glory is not easy, and is not for everyone. Like other startups that survived the Internet bubble crash, we have endured our share of suffering, poured sweat and toil into our dreams, sacrificed, saw our boldness put to the test against much larger rivals—and yet we have excelled in providing cost-effective solutions to our customers while keeping the market competitive and honest.

Speedera was founded in 1999 with nothing more than an idea and the potential to be successful. My job was to sell this dream and yet I had to have my feet planted firmly on the ground in doing so. I couldn’t be talking about flying horses, but a real idea that—if executed—would change the Internet and make the world a better place. I had to be 150-percent sure of myself, and that meant convincing even my wife, the hardest of all critics. What made me so self-assured was that I knew that more than technology and capital would be required to ensure success. Sheer human capital would make the difference—finding the right people to make the dream come to life.

Judging by my peers, our board, our backers, my fellow employees, our partners, my friends, and most importantly, our customers, I believe we have succeeded. But we still want to push forward and farther to even greater success. Our story has just begun. And there are many other companies just like Speedera that offer individuals great opportunity for personal and professional growth that they just won’t find at bigger companies.

Recruiting continues to be a priority for companies our size. Like many other firms, we’re up against giants like Microsoft and Dell in the market for the cream of India’s high-tech talent. But, we’re making big gains. Let me tell you why.

To attract, retain and motivate talented people in today’s brave new world, you must treat them as humans, not as cogs in a bigger machine. You have to impart your values so that they know where you’re coming from. Some of the core values, which I believe, are required for success:

• Customers come first
• Sense of urgency
• Pursuit of Excellence
• Creativity

To get people to join you on your mission is pretty straightforward. You must provide meaningful work and you must treat people:

• As equals
• With respect
• Fairly

And make sure the rewards are equitably shared among all of the people within the company, from the administrative staff to the accounting team to operations, engineering, sales, marketing—everybody.

Proof of how this works took place last March at Speedera. Months before, we had set a goal of achieving profitability and we communicated that goal to the entire staff during a company meeting. I stood up and promised all our employees that if we achieved our profitability goal, Speedera would fly the whole company to Hawaii—spouses and children included. By treating people as human beings and working as team members, not cogs, we pulled together. As a result, we all got to board that flight to the tropical paradise—all this despite one of the worst economies in the history of high tech.

This year we’re going to another tropical paradise. We’re already close to achieving our next milestone.

Why did this work? A company succeeds most when it realizes that its biggest asset is its people. For each individual, there was glory in contributing. Unless you work for a smaller company, you’ll never be part of a truly creative process like the one that blossomed here in the valley during the ‘90s.

Where’s the glory in working for a big name company now, when you can watch something you build grow and prosper? Instead of joining an established brand why not build a new one—and go from zero to hero?

To the new engineers and other graduates coming out of India’s vaunted education institutions, we need you. We need your creative spirit and energies—now more than ever. India waits for you to make history.