“And we launched the first pilot in Mumbai at Welingkar’s innovation lab (innoWE) because we recognise the growing opportunities and talent in India and want to understand the expectations of the next generation,” said Shilpa Marwha, member of Johnson Controls. The live demonstration of the survey was conducted at Welingkar on Thursday.

While several global corporations are supporting the project, Marwha said that the company is open to Indian investors too.

Oxygenz will investigate how, where and when young people wish to work and subsequently in increasingly competitive marketplaces like India, this knowledge will inform businesses about the “workplace attributes” needed in attracting, recruiting and retaining the generation Y.

“At Oxygenz, students and young workers can be part of a live, online, interactive survey and build a profile of their ideal workplace which they can share with friends and other respondents in the world. On completion of the survey, respondents are able to create their workplace in virtual form,” said Marwha.

Besides, Welingkar in India, Johnson Controls has linked up with other educational institutes like University of Central London (UK); Cornell University (US) and The Hague University (Netherlands) among others.

“Different needs of interaction require different set-ups and there’s certainly a need for someone to design that ideal work place and Oxygenz in that sense is plugging the gap,” said Hari Krishnan Pillai, an MBA student from Welingkar and one of the first few students to have participated in the survey.

A database of information segmented by industry, sector, country, gender and age will be created, subsequent to which a complex matrix of workplace-related data will be generated. “Employers are increasingly looking at Facebook and Orkut to check the profile of prospective employees. And though this concept of designing workplaces as per the needs of the generation will take some time to gain popularity in India, in the long-run, companies would go for such practices to retain people,” said Zena Chhatwal, another MBA student from Welingkar.