The TechGig Code Gladiators Competition Enters the Finals

DELHI, June 25, 2014 /PRNewswire/ --

Gamefication of Talent Identification, Recruitment and Retention has reached its highest peak with the biggest coding contest in India reaching its grand finale! Two months of intense competition and hard fought battles have revealed 50 finalists from across India, who will now engage in the TechGig Code Gladiators National Finals to reveal the top coders across the country on Friday, 27^th June 2014 at Orbis, The Leela Ambience Gurgaon.

TechGig Code Gladiators - Hunt for India's Best Coders is being held in the following programming languages - C, C++, C#, Java, Java script, PHP, VB.NET, Ruby on Rails, Python and Perl. Gladiators are allowed to compete in multiple languages.

Avnish Anand of TechGig.com, the organisers of Code Gladiators said, "I have been surprised by the participation level and the seriousness with which both the employees as well as the HR have taken this. We have had requests for extensions from the HR so that more employees can participate. Companies have also increased the number of representatives for the inter-company rounds to give more employees a chance to represent their organisation. In some cases, the employees have pushed the HR and business team to participate."

"Overall, there is strong evidence to suggest that the methodology to use open coding contest to identify the best coders inside an organisation as well the companies with best coders seems to have found a lot of takers," added Anand.

The top companies, who are participating at this event include the likes of Persistent, Schneider Electric, Steria, Sears Holdings, MetricStream, Akamai Technologies, Unisys, HCL, McAfee, RedBus.in and NetCore among 60 participating companies. More than 40,000 coders have taken the tests and just 50 coders have made it through to the finals.

Speaking of the Code Gladiators contest, Mr. Nitinchandra Shende, Head of Talent Management at Persistent said, "It's a great experience participating in Code Gladiators. We provide many platforms for employees to showcase their technical capabilities, whether it is a 24-hour programming contest, innovation day, etc. However, as these events are physically conducted, they always tend to be more local. Code Gladiators in that sense was a true global event for us. Many of our employees in overseas locations also responded to the contest announcement with enthusiasm. It provided a level playing field and there were truly no barriers whatsoever such as role, experience level, seniority, etc."

Mr Santosh Panicker - CPO of Sears Holdings (SHI) said, "I am proud to announce our association with TechGig Code Gladiators, a prestigious coding contest that SHI is co-sponsoring and participating in. India has an abundance of brilliant developers and this hunt will definitely help India to recognise and emerge as one of the best coders and developers in our country. We, as co-sponsors, are happy to be able to facilitate this cause.

We are ecstatic that with this association, SHI will be a well-known name to over 50 thousand coders and our associates will represent SHI on this national platform. All the very best to all the coders and we hope that TechGig Code Gladiators will surely see brilliant coding solutions. Let the games begin!" added Panicker.

MetricStream's Anil Bhat - Associate Vice President - Platform Development said, "In today's complex world, solving technical and business problems requires developers to adopt a lot of ingenuity and simplicity. While most of the developers today have figured out the ingenuity part, it still takes a lot of skill to develop solutions that are simple and elegant."

"At MetricStream, our engineers have been innovating and solving real-world GRC problems of our customers. Competing in Code Gladiators would give them the opportunity to hone their craft working on problems that are designed to challenge their skills in writing efficient code. It would also give them a chance to compare their skills with peers in the industry and learn from their experience," added Anil Bhatt.

"It may surprise many to learn that Schneider Electric is as much at the forefront of emerging technologies as any pure software product/services company. Schneider Electric India is constantly looking for innovative and effective ways for our top talent to learn, grow and develop. I am confident in the talent at Schneider Electric and Code Gladiators is a perfect platform to challenge our talent to outperform themselves and shine at this national level event," said Ramesh Phatak, R&D Head of Schneider Electric.

"Excellence in coding is the hallmark of any software technology organisation. At a very base level, the quality of the code in a way determines how technology shapes the future. Akamai being a pioneer and a leader in internet technology, is committed to being at the bleeding edge of cloud, which takes coding to a completely different level. It firmly believes in nurturing and promoting the coding talent across the country by associating with 'Code Gladiators'. This is the Akamai way of promoting excellence in a very competitive yet fun filled way," said Shiva Sundar, Director - Human Resources, Akamai Technologies India Pvt. Ltd.

Participants were equally enthused about the contest as evinced by coder Pradeep Kumbhar's remark: "I am a domain team member and I don't have an engineering background, but I could still participate as it was open for all. Qualifying is a great achievement for me and I could prove my skills through this platform."

"I learned a lot during this period. Whatever I wanted to get my hands on like Graph theory, Algorithms etc., I could get that knowledge here. It all happened, because of this competition only. It improved my coding skills and made me focus on performance of my code rather than just writing code. Thanks to Persistent Systems and Code Gladiators team for arranging such an awesome contest," added Pradeep.

Another Gladiator Pratik Erande said, "I was sitting in cafeteria when I first saw Code Gladiator contest flyer. I was excited to participate but was not sure if I could, because I was a trainee and have been with Persistent for only a year. But no age, no designation, no educational qualification, no years of experience in company but only our logic and programming skills were enough to participate in this contest. I am really thankful to Persistent Systems Ltd. for giving me this platform to showcase my skills."

"Code Gladiators' problem statements were not straightforward with no one to help you but you. This makes us stretch our limits and even go beyond them, that's the spirit of the competition. After the semifinal round was over finally the butterflies settled. No matter what the end result is, I would again like be a part of such competition. Kudos to the entire Persistent Team and to everyone else who make this competition successful!" added Pratik.

Stay tuned to TechGig Code Gladiators - Hunt for India's Best Coders as it reaches its ultimate level - the Grande Finale being held at The Leela Ambience Gurgaon on 27^th June 2014.

About Code Gladiators: TechGig has been a pioneer in conducting technology related contests for internal employees, company-sponsored contests for talent engagement and other employer-branding activities. Code Gladiators combines all these activities and takes the scale to an entirely different level - one where employees from companies across India will be involved at the same time. Code Gladiators is going to be a corporate battle - the best talent from IT companies will battle it out to a fight to the finish.

Code Gladiators showcases the company with the best coders by identifying the best coder in the country. The online event took place through out the months of April and May in an online format, leading up to the LIVE finals which are being held at Delhi in June among the top 50 coders from across the country.

Media Contact : Aseem Seth, [email protected], +91-9910273367, + (91) 120 663 6338, Head of Corporate Communications, Times Business Solutions Limited