Indian employers are stubbornly obsessed with elite students—and it’s hurting them

In his 2016 book Alibaba: The House That Jack Ma Built, author Duncan Clark wrote about how the founder of one of the world’s biggest e-commerce companies hires. When building up his team Jack preferred hiring people a notch or two below the top performers in their schools. Not only do they want to hire the top performers, they want to hire them from elite colleges such as the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) or the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs).