"Don't worry about the pantry. Don't worry about Diwali. Just hire 8 engineers."
That was Athish's mandate when he joined PICE last August. Simple, right? Except he was competing against Oracle, Google, and Amazon, companies writing ₹1 crore+ cheques that actually mean something.
PICE had 10 engineers in a 30-person company, and a mission that doesn't forgive mistakes. They build credit infrastructure for India’s invisible entrepreneurs in Tier 2 and 3 cities, people who quietly run businesses worth crores but never talk about it online.
“This isn’t consumer tech where you patch bugs later. This is payments. Mess up, and someone's money vanishes.” Athish says.
He had to hire engineers who could handle that pressure, while competing against companies with 10x his budget.
The Brutal Math
"These are engineers with 2-5 years of experience," Athish says. "They sit there thinking: I'm willing to give 2 years to a startup that may/may not succeed—but that's a huge bet.'"
The math is simple. Amazon/Fintech pays ₹1 crore+. PICE can't. So the story has to be bulletproof.
But Athish was the only TA. The engineering team could spare maybe an hour a day. Scheduling was chaos. Between January and April, he was sourcing, screening, chasing interview slots, and closing offers.
Then came the gut punches.
- An SDE - 4, 50 days into notice, called saying he got a Singapore offer.
- Another candidate, proactive and excited, suddenly ghosted.
"Anything can happen," Athish says. "I knew it could. But when it does, it hits differently."
But Athish knew something had to change.
The Discovery
By January, the bandwidth crisis was real. Three or four engineers giving an hour a day wasn't enough to fill 8 critical roles. On-call availability kept collapsing under sprint pressure.
That’s when Athish remembered Intervue, something he’d tracked since his GrowthX days after seeing it on Shark Tank. He tested it in November, bought credits in December, and by January, he went all-in.
Handed credentials to his agency partners with one instruction: "Figure it out. Give candidates two slots, take it or leave it."
They never came back with questions. That's when Athish knew this was different.
The System That Scales
PICE runs a 3-round process with military precision:
Round 1 & 2: Technical evaluation through Intervue—LLD, DSA, high-level design
Round 3: VP of Engineering throws real problems.
Final: Athish closes the offer
Round 3: VP of Engineering throws real problems.
Final: Athish closes the offer
"My team only meets candidates after they clear an Intervue round," he says. "Everything before that is automated."
Swapnil Upadhyay, their VP Engineering, has built two startups and is now building a payments platform where mistakes aren’t negotiable. “We take time to find the right people, because hiring fast and firing later is unfair to everyone involved.”
The Bandwidth Revelation
Before Intervue, Athish’s day was a tangle of sourcing, scheduling, rescheduling, feedback chasing, and rejections.
After Intervue, he finally had breathing room.
"I'm no longer wondering: Is the interview happening? Is feedback sent?" he says. "Now I think about which of my acquisition channels is producing quality, and how to push agencies better." That shift unlocked everything.
"If I save 1 hour from scheduling hell, I can spend 15 minutes with a candidate on the fence," he explains. "That 15 minutes closes offers."
What Actually Surprised Him
Athish expected Intervue to fix scheduling. What he didn’t expect was the depth of evaluation.
"You get 7-page feedback reports that actually show how candidates think," he says. "Not just the output, their entire approach."
He even summarises feedback for the candidates using GPT. "Most platforms give you a score. Intervue gave me insights I could use."
Today, PICE has 20+ engineers. Two sourcing agencies run Intervue independently. The engineering team no longer does first-rounds. They build.
Advice for Leaders Scaling Fast
Pick your battle. "Top talent is expensive. You pay with time or money. If you can, use both."
Free your bandwidth. "Outsource what doesn't need your brain. Focus on what does- selling your story, building relationships, closing candidates."
The Bottom Line
Athish is still competing against ₹1 crore packages, still hiring for a 0-to-1 journey, still dealing with candidates who ghost.
But he's built a system that scales. His engineering team focuses solely on building. His sourcing agencies run independently. And he spends his time doing what actually wins talent—telling PICE's story to people who will bet on them.
"When you're always juggling logistics, you can't think strategically," Athish says. "Free that up, and you can actually compete."
He's competing. And winning. And the signal is loud and clear.
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