IT majors take on start ups in battle for young talent

India's oldest and most distinguished IT firms are doing what would have been unthinkable a few years ago - holding coding marathons to develop innovative solutions and deploying "commando" units to resolve clients' IT woes within hours, Reuters reported.

Infosys, Wipro and other Indian IT giants, which rose to prominence during the outsourcing boom in the 1990s and 2000s, had had a difficult time keeping pace with start-ups, which had also impacted revenue growth rate that had halved since 2011-12.

New venture entrepreneurs say they go beyond cookie-cutter solutions and and tackle assignments far quicker and for less. They also attracted top talent among engineering graduates in the country with their unconventional work culture, in ways the older companies could not.

Client demands were also changing India's $147-billion IT outsourcing industry with major telecoms, retail and banking firms demanding more than an outsourced help desk.

They now demanded everything from help solving a server crash overnight to help building an app, according to industry veterans.