Subhi Sanil Shildhankar, Co-Founder & Director (HR), Cloud Counselage Pvt Ltd.

Your journey with Cloud Counselage has been truly inspiring. What motivated you to build a cause-driven professional community aimed at eradicating unemployability among youth?

The motivation comes from my own personal journey and the challenges I witnessed around me. Despite completing my engineering and management degrees and securing campus placements, I faced struggles in finding a career path that truly aligned with my aspirations. This was a defining experience that left me questioning the existing gaps in our education and employment systems.

Additionally, I saw my brother and my Startup Founder, who, despite their hard work and determination, faced a difficult road in securing their first good jobs after graduation.

Their stories are not isolated – every year, lakhs of fresh graduates experience the same painful cycle of unemployment and underemployment, which adds to the growing challenge of unemployability.

 This fuelled our passion to build a cause-driven community aimed at eradicating unemployability among youth where they can explore purpose-driven careers.

As an HR leader recognised for fostering one of the ‘Best Team Cultures’ in Maharashtra, what principles guide you in creating a positive and inclusive workplace?

As an HR leader, I believe people are the greatest asset of any organisation. When individuals feel valued, they bring their best selves to work, driving productivity and engagement. To cultivate a thriving culture, I focus on the below key principles that nurture collaboration, autonomy, and personal growth:

• Flat hierarchy and Empowerment: Everyone’s voice is heard, fostering open communication. This empowers teams to take ownership and collaborate effectively. As our shared values and sense of purpose guide us, we trust our teams with autonomy to make decisions, eliminating micromanagement.
• Work-life balance: Flexibility in time, remote work, and understanding personal needs like leaves help our team feel supported and respected.
• Continuous Learning: We mandate each team member to dedicate 20% of their working hours to continuous learning, thereby enabling them to develop and implement innovative solutions.

Our commitment to inclusivity is reflected not just in practice, but also in the diversity of our workforce from different locations, including individuals with gaps post their graduation, career breaks and with transferable skills from other industries. This global and collaborative mindset strengthens our culture, ensuring we are truly inclusive.

 By focusing on these principles, we’ve built one of the ‘Best Team Cultures’ in Maharashtra, and I am proud of our collective achievements.

Cloud Counselage has supported 400,000+ community members from over 35 countries. What strategies have been most effective in scaling your platform to this level?

At Cloud Counselage, our success in supporting over 400,000 community members from more than 35 countries stems from a deep-rooted commitment to our social cause: addressing unemployability both in India and globally. Every team member is driven by this mission, and their dedication is reflected in everything we do. As all our offerings are completely free for our community members, it has played a key role in building trust and confidence within our community.

This strong sense of purpose has not only empowered us to scale effectively, but it’s also created a powerful ripple effect, our community members become advocates for the cause, driving organic growth and spreading our message. As we continue to evolve, we see the 400,000+ community members as just the beginning. Our goal is to expand to over 100 million members across 100+ countries, and we believe that by maintaining our focus on empowering individuals through professional development and meaningful employment opportunities, we will continue to make a lasting impact globally.

The ‘Gift-A-Career’ initiative is a unique program under your leadership. Could you share its impact on bridging the industry-academia gap for fresh graduates and young professionals?

Gift-A-Career Foundation in association with Cloud Counselage, has taken up the noble initiative to bridge the ever-widening gap between academia and industry by providing professional development absolutely free to the beneficiaries in all the phases of their career lifecycle. This is done by providing real-world industry exposure and experience through access to industry training, career guidance, global professional internships, and personalised career visioning.

The impact of this initiative has been profound: many of our interns have gone on to pursue higher education at renowned universities, secured high-paying jobs with leading organisations globally, and some have even launched their own entrepreneurial ventures. By empowering them with practical experience and mentorship, we are not only bridging the industry-academia gap but also helping shape the next generation of leaders, professionals, and innovators.

You’ve successfully onboarded 30,000 interns and are targeting 100,000 internships across India. What challenges have you faced in expanding this initiative, and how are you addressing them?

The main challenges we face in expanding this initiative include:

• Gaining mindshare about offering professional development at no cost to the beneficiaries and providing internships at a mass level: We are addressing this by emphasizing on our commitment to interns as our future workforce by sharing success stories and testimonials from those who’ve transitioned to full-time roles with us or our clients.
• Fast spread of awareness: We are addressing this by collaborating with colleges and companies by offering them freemium benefits. We work with colleges to provide free professional development and career opportunities for their students and alumni network. We provide companies with free job listings and access to talent through our ever growing industry academia community. Leveraging our strong digital presence, with over 2.5 lakh LinkedIn followers, to drive awareness.
• Funds: We are addressing this by actively raising funds to ensure the continued growth and impact of this initiative, enabling us to reach our goal of 100,000 internships in every state across India.

As an advocate for upskilling and training, how has Cloud Counselage’s approach to professional development shaped the career trajectories of its community members?

We have shifted the focus from skill development to professional development with our Global Professional Internship, which would direct them towards the trajectory of Global Professionalism and with our Entrepreneurship initiatives towards developing Leadership & Entrepreneurial Mindset.

Receiving the ‘Best Team Culture’ award among 2,500 companies is a significant achievement. What does this recognition mean to you and your team?

While the organisations across the world are still figuring out ways of working with GenZs, being rated by GenZs as one of the ‘TOP 50’ companies among 2500 companies in Maharashtra with an ‘Overall Job Satisfaction Score of 4.7/5’ and being recognised to have the ‘Best Team Culture’, gives us more power to build a global team of 100 Mn+ professionals across 100+ countries.

As an industry leader focused on social impact, what advice would you give to startups aiming to align profitability with purpose?

Every business should be a ‘Social Enterprise’ where the cause drives the business and vice-versa. Had every business been a ‘Social Enterprise’, the world would've been a beautiful place.

What is your opinion on the role of Industrial Automation magazine in showcasing industry trends and empowering women in technology and automation?

As the future trend in industry automation would be based on AI completely in the future, the Industry Automation magazine would play a big role in creating awareness amongst women to take up careers in technology, automation and entrepreneurship.

What are the three words that best describe how it feels to be a finalist in the Women in Tech 2025 competition?

Recognised. Empowered. Motivated.

 Subhi Shildhankar, Social Entrepreneur, Co-Founder & Director (HR), Cloud Counselage Pvt Ltd, and Advisor, CC-GAC Foundation, is a Gold Medalist in MBA (HR), a BE (Computer Science), and have a comprehensive work experience of IT consulting and recruitment with top Indian MNCs like LTI, Tech Mahindra & TCS.

Response: Currently, I am the Co-Founder & Director (HR) of Cloud Counselage Pvt Ltd, an award winning IT & Management Consulting Company with a Social Cause at heart. I am managing the Talent Acquisition and Management vertical for internal hiring and working with start-ups to help them recruit bright minds in the field of IT & Management. I am also heading the hiring activities of Industry Academia Community (IAC) members along with mentoring interns, freshers and engaging with professionals, companies.

My vision is to funnel the massive skilled, job-ready work force generated through our ‘IAC App’ into fresher bulk recruitment and upskilled professionals into lateral recruitment for our existing and future client partners as well as our own company which will be utilised in capturing at least 1% of the $500 billion Indian IT sector by 2030, delivering IT & Management Consulting services.