As Indian hiring shifts toward being more skills-led - particularly at the global capability centres driving much of the country's tech job growth - one practical implication stands out for school students: waiting until college to start building a portfolio may already be starting late.

A portfolio doesn't need to be a finished startup or a polished app. It can be as simple as a few small, real projects: a basic website built for a local shop, a data project analyzing something you're curious about, a few pieces of writing published somewhere real, or a small tool that solves a problem you personally had - similar to how Tilak Mehta built a courier startup out of his own frustration with slow deliveries.

The key difference between a portfolio project and a school assignment is intent: a portfolio project is something you chose to build because you wanted to solve or explore something, not because it was assigned. Even an imperfect, small project like this signals initiative in a way that grades alone can't.

For students unsure where to start, a useful approach is picking one small, real annoyance in your own life - schoolwork organization, a hobby, a family business - and trying to build even a rough first version of a solution. It doesn't need to be impressive on day one. It just needs to exist, so it can be improved.