Originally published by Ravi Venkatesan on LinkedIn: Look who is winning the war for talent in India and why.

Directi. Reliance Industries. Flipkart. Alphabet/Google. GE. What do these companies have in common? They are on the 2018 list of the 25 most desirable companies to work for in India, according to LinkedIn. In contrast to traditional approaches to identifying the Best Places to Work In, LinkedIn relies purely on three objective pieces of data -the number of job applications, employee engagement and retention – to come up with their list.

There are lots of things that are interesting about the list of companies this year.

One is that no IT services companies make the cut this year.. Past lists have had Cognizant, Accenture, Cap Gemini and Wipro. For an industry that has human talent as its primary asset, this should give pause.

Equally striking, there is just one Bank and one engineering company on the list. Having spent my career in engineering, IT and now banking, this is sobering.

Global companies dominate. 18 of the 25 companies are headquartered outside India.

Directi, a young company that few have heard of, has made its debut at number 1. It’s a fascinating company. Look them up.

The list is dynamic. Fourteen of last year’s champions fell off this year. Only 10 companies have made the cut in all three years. They are Flipkart, Amazon, Google, KPMG, Deloitte, OYO, Ola, Adobe, MakeMyTrip, and surprise, surprise- Reliance Industries. This is an impressive achievement. One year can be a fluke. Three years in a row is not an accident. These companies are clearly working hard and consistently to remain attractive to talent.

A disproportionate number of the companies are information intensive and knowledge driven rather than asset intensive. Perhaps it is no coincidence then that they are so focused on attracting, engaging and retaining smart people. However since every business is becoming information intensive and knowledge driven, this should serve as a wakeup call for other companies who are moaning about the shortage of talent.

The really fundamental question though is what do these companies do that makes them so attractive to smart ambitious professionals. I went to Glassdoor to see if I could find any clues. Three things jumped out. They have a high bar when it comes to hiring; the interviews are grueling and some companies ask very unconventional questions. You have to be smart and quick to get in. All of them seem to have an intense, high-energy culture and go out of their way to make their workplaces exciting and fun instead of dreary, hierarchical sweatshops. Finally, they appear to do a much-better-than-average job of creating opportunities for people to learn and grow. Many of the companies on the list are either young companies like One97 or Flipkart or, like Amazon and Alphabet/Google, are young in India. This means they probably still have a fairly sharp sense of purpose and focus and there is intensity towards getting things done. The challenge for all companies is how to maintain this youthful energy as the company grows, ages and becomes successful. Jeff Bezos, in his shareholder letter last year, calls this the challenge of ‘remaining a Day 1 company”.