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Alike its super powerful presence felt all across the internet, <keyword id="51662" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="booking">Booking</keyword>.com has an amazing workplace culture. Headquartered in Amsterdam, this global travel metasearch engine company is something whose openings you should start exploring if you are looking out. As if working with one of the leading travel portal wasn’t enough, they have ‘meal on the house’, a quirky office decor, lots of break out areas, amazing view of canals of Amsterdam and options to cycle inside the office. If you don’t believe, just scroll through the photos of Booking.com’s headquarters and see how cool they are.

Booking.com's global headquarter in Amsterdam looks 'sincerely quirky'. Check it out

The <keyword id="6360189" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Union-Budget">Union Budget</keyword> 2017-18 was the most crucial one with soaring expectations from the government to put forward populist policies that included revamping the tax structure and implementation of Goods and <keyword id="645517" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="services-tax">Services Tax</keyword>. 
 One of the key announcements made in the domain of financial sector was the decision to do away with the <keyword id="62529" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="Foreign-Investment-Promotion-Board">Foreign Investment Promotion Board</keyword> (<keyword id="6360345" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="FIPB">FIPB</keyword>). 
 
<a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/uber-partners-with-reliance-jio/articleshow/57254320.cms">ALSO READ: Uber partners with Reliance JIO to allow payments with JIO Money</a> 
 
FIPB had come into existence under the Prime Minister's Office in the wake of the economic liberalization drive of the early 1990s. The scrapping of FIPB to ease the inflow of Foreign Direct Investment can be regarded as a forward-looking approach, as it envisages foreign companies to invest in the country with ease. 
 
The elimination of FIPB will see only 10% of the foreign investment approvals go to the Board while 90% done via the automatic route. The latest move will delegate more powers to the regulators or to the individual ministries or departments that require government approval. 
 Currently, FIPB offers single-window clearance for applications on FDI in India that are under the approval route. The <keyword id="6355261" type="POSITION" weightage="20" keywordseo="Finance-minister">Finance Minister</keyword> also announced that further liberalization of the FDI policy is under consideration and necessary announcements will be made in due course. 
 
This shows the government’s commitment to eradicating red-tapism and boost foreign investment in the country. The government has further taken up a number of reforms to liberalize the FDI regime. Over the past two years, the Centre liberalized 15 sectors for FDI along with some sweeping amendments introduced to the FDI policy in seven sectors, including civil aviation, defense, and pharmaceuticals. With the chances of more FDI money being infused into start-ups, this move is bound to promote new ventures in several underserved sectors of the economy. 
 
<a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/booking-com-is-providing-startups-in-tourism-sector-a-chance-to-go-to-amsterdam/articleshow/57253587.cms">ALSO READ: Booking.com is Providing Startups in Tourism Sector a chance to go to Amsterdam</a> 
 
The Centre has also laid emphasis on a cashless economy and the government’s decision to demonetize high-denomination currency notes on November 8, 2016, has made people shift to e-wallets and other payment options in a massive way. Several e-commerce companies have benefitted due to the shift towards cashless payments, and, the government believes that with greater digitization comes higher GDP growth. 
 In a bid to promote cashless transactions, The <keyword id="25455" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="finance">Finance</keyword> Minister’s host of measures such as exempting miniature point of sale (POS) and micro-POS machines from countervailing duty (<keyword id="6358127" type="TECHNOLOGY" weightage="20" keywordseo="CVD">CVD</keyword>) and special additional duty (SAD) will prove beneficial to several e-commerce companies. 
 
The FM’s proposal for start-ups to avail a three-year tax holiday in the first seven years of their operations has come as a relief for several new and upcoming e-commerce entities. This will be a welcome move for start-ups set up post-March 31, 2016, as they will now be able to enjoy tax benefits. E-commerce companies can make the most of the tax relief, as they will be able to allocate these funds in adopting newer technologies, hiring skilled resources, implanting newer strategies, etc. This will also enable e-commerce companies to create more job opportunities and strengthen their core teams. 
 
On the other hand, while the industry expected the elimination of Minimum Alternate Tax (MAT), the FM has allowed carrying forward MAT up to a period of 15 years instead of 10 years at present. While this decision has not gone down well with all the entrepreneurs, the extended carry forward of MAT credit will enable companies to offset their future tax liabilities once the profit-linked investments are phased out. 
 The tax-reduction revenues for companies with a turnover of up to Rs 50 crore to 25% from an earlier 30% will be beneficial to 6.67 lakh companies in India. This will prove to be a big relief to the emerging e-commerce companies. However, certain quarters found the lack of mention of Angel Tax for early-stage startups in the <keyword id="6358021" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="budget">Budget</keyword> disappointing and many expressed their concerns that the Budget is being less inclusive even within the start-up ecosystem with financial services given greater priority over other sectors. 
 
<a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/snapdeals-shopo-shuts-down-roposo-kraftly-see-surge-in-sellers/articleshow/57208653.cms">ALSO READ: Snapdeal's Shopo Shuts Down; Roposo, Kraftly See Surge In Sellers</a> 
​ 
Overall, the budget sends out a message to investors that India anticipates a rapid growth. The liberal FDI policies, removal of FIPB, a host of tax measures along with initiatives proposed to build a digital India shows that the government is poised to reignite the country’s growth engine and run a stable race in an increasingly uncertain economy. 
 
This article was originally authored by Rashi Menda, CEO &amp; Founder, Zapyle

Liberalization in the FDI policy to favor several e-commerce companies in India

<div class="image-container float_right"><div class="image"><a href="http://mediabank.amsterdammarketing.org/umedial/umedialfilehandler.aspx?data=VF4vJ3m6wobDlvPbFur%2bCMYD25QqaCBvxs6%2bZat5qodm0Svj0kXvGOwK%2f45aR1Xy&amp;guid=e580e085-fe58-42e3-8530-dd9adda4024e">City of Amsterdam</a></div></div>20 miles south-east of <keyword id="22442" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Amsterdam">Amsterdam</keyword>, surrounded by forests, lakes and meadows, is the town of Hilversum.
Known to many as Media City, the borough is home to the Netherlands' radio and TV industries, and its modernist architecture houses audio and TV studios, production companies and broadcasters, as well as a number of technical universities.
Logically, Hilversum also plays host to a number of digital agencies, perfectly placed to service these media companies and to take advantage of the talent emerging from the universities.
One such agency is MediaMonks, arguably Amsterdam's most famous digital production agency, despite not technically being based in Amsterdam. With some 170 employees, and clients including Tribal DDB, Mother, Wieden + Kennedy and BBH, the agency's work is wide-ranging, from Heineken's James Bond to campaigns for KLM and Adidas.
Catching up with Victor Knaap, one of the agency's four Dutch founders, he tells us: "There are a lot of universities and education institutions around because a lot of the big TV networks are here. The largest sound and animation university is based right next to our office.
"One of the guys that came from that university [Erik-Jan de Boer] just won an Oscar for the opening animation of Life of Pi. It's really high end stuff they do, so we pull a lot of talent from there," he explains.
For Knaap, there's a clear distinction between Hilversum and Amsterdam, even if he's not always quick to correct clients who assume the agency is based in the capital. For him, "the technical guys are based around this part of the Netherlands, while all the hipster designers come from Amsterdam".
And while I'm sure this tongue-in-cheek account of Amsterdam's digital scene is purely for my benefit, Knaap's description of his agency as "a safe pair of hands" is refreshingly honest. He explains that the agency's USP is that it gets work done on time. "It's something you can't underestimate", he says. "You can't imagine how many fuck-ups there are in this line of business."
He continues in this candid vein, admitting that, as a digital production company, the agency's job is essentially to make things look good. "If someone brings a shit idea to me," he exclaims, "then a huge, bright, shiny shit idea comes out". Luckily for him, he says, MediaMonks gets to work on "a lot of sexy international brands," for a number of "sexy agencies, like Wieden + Kennedy or 180," so the "shit" ideas are few and far between.
<div class="image-container"><div class="image"><a href="http://www.thedrum.com/uploads/styles/creative_review/public/creative_review/116874/cr_images/Screen%20Shot%202013-08-30%20at%2010.50.02.png?itok=h4E6vxXE">The Drum</a>Tribal DDB Amsterdam's Bronze Lion winning work KLM Space</div></div>
Also based away from the city centre, although admittedly not quite as far out as MediaMonks, is Tribal DDB, one of the older and bigger online agencies in Amsterdam and a company which, Knaap explains, is "killing it" from an interactive perspective and which is "on its way to becoming the best in the world".
Headquartered in Amstelveen, a southern suburb of Amsterdam also home to agency client KLM, a successful year for Tribal DDB has seen it collect three bronze and two silver Lions at Cannes (for its KLM 'Space' campaign, Heineken campaigns 'Ignite' and 'Your Future Bottle', Amstel's 'Trophy Can' and Philip's 'The Sound of Creation') as well as a Silver Clio, a Webby award, and several site of the day and site of the month awards from FWA.
The agency's head of strategy Antoinette Hoes explains that the Dutch industry is great at "incorporating different cultures, nationalities and disciplines" into its work. And as much as Dutch universities are now producing graduates good enough to win Oscars, "talent travels these days" she says, and the city is extremely attractive to the international crowd so the agency scene benefits from constant supply of high quality digital people from all over the world.
And just as the industry's ability to produce and attract quality digital people raises no concerns for Hoes, its ability to retain the best graduates is likewise not worth worrying about.
"We like our Dutchies best after a stint abroad," says Hoes. "So we think it is great that they are tempted abroad and know that we will welcome them back someday."
Jasper Mittelmeijer of social media agency LikeFriends delves even further into the merits of the Dutch educational system, shaking his head as he explains how, traditionally, creativity and science were kept separate. "They were even housed in different institutions," he says, "making it harder for the two ingredients of innovation to meet".
This was far from an ideal situation, he says. "One might even call it stupid".
Things are very different these days, however, with universities "pushing students to be more entrepreneurial, creative and daring". And conversely, says Mittelmeijer, "art schools are far more market-minded".
Mittelmeijer admits that the digital industry in the city might lack tradition, having "matured later than in the anglo-saxon market," because of which there isn't such a strong base of well-trained and highly experienced people for juniors to look to. This leads to "a bit of 'wheel-inventing' at times," but "inventing the wheel comes with its fair share of fun and, more often than not, throws up some interesting opportunities," smiles Mittelmeijer.
<div class="image-container"><div class="image"><a href="http://www.thedrum.com/uploads/styles/creative_review/public/creative_review/116874/cr_images/Screen%20Shot%202013-08-30%20at%2010.44.41_0.png?itok=ujT3EfZK">The Drum</a>LikeFriends' work for Pepsi</div></div>
LikeFriends founder Stef de Jong explains how, for outside talent, "Amsterdam offers a European experience, with English as a main language".
"The city culture is open," he says, "and we feel that the city focuses on people more than companies.
"If you're bold, brave and work hard, Amsterdam is a great base for either starting up or developing your career." 
New to the city and developing her career is Marjolein Koppelaar. Until recently Koppelaar worked out of London for Ve Interactive, but, in her new role as MD for the Benelux region, set up the shopping cart recovery agency's Amsterdam office - a mere two weeks before we showed up on her doorstep. 
With the marketing services company's footprint already spanning the world, from offices in Sydney and Stockholm to Sao Paulo and Shanghai, Amsterdam was perhaps an obvious choice for the agency's next address. 
"Amsterdam is a hub within Europe and the tech and start-up scene is growing very fast," explains Koppelaar - something evident when you look at the success stories emerging from the city in the past few years, including mobile augmented reality leader Layar, file transfer platform WeTransfer and online travel agency Booking.com. 
"Around the Grachtengordel [the canal district] there is a real growth of these kind of companies. It's great to have like-minded companies around you and it is definitely exciting to be part of the fast-growing community," Koppelaar says. "And compared to other European cities it's a relatively small city and not as hectic as London or Berlin".
 Perhaps then, Amsterdam's size is its strength. For all its historical, creative and cultural significance, the city is not a sprawling metropolis in the mould of London, Paris or New York. But instead of this being a weakness, Amsterdam's compactness might go some way to explaining why the city acts as such an effective incubator of ideas. 
"We're a small country but have always been internationally minded, especially in Amsterdam," says Koppelaar. "I think the combination of the Dutch mentality of 'keep both feet on the ground' and the international spirit makes Amsterdam an attractive city, especially in the online world where there are no borders." 
Asked about the city's weaknesses, Koppelaar laments the fact that it is slightly behind in terms of digital technology expertise, explaining that it "follows London and Berlin in some areas", including the shopping cart abandonment industry which was relatively unknown about just two years ago, despite being an essential part of businesses strategies in London. Likewise the performance marketing industry, where it seems that "the discussion about 'last cookie wins' only started recently at a broader audience," despite having been going for a while in the UK. 
"We are working in a very exciting industry however, and it is changing all the time," she adds. "I think most of us are very excited about that."
<div class="image-container"><div class="image"><a href="http://www.thedrum.com/uploads/styles/creative_review/public/creative_review/116874/cr_images/Screen%20Shot%202013-08-30%20at%2011.35.51.png?itok=Lq7KPe0_">The Drum</a>Minivegas' work for Sony's The Last of Us</div></div> 
Minivegas creative director Maarten Boon is similarly excited by the what's happening in the digital industry in Amsterdam, saying the mood in the city is "pretty positive". 
"Dutch consumers are really digital-oriented," he tells us, "and next to that, collective belt-tightening has forced agencies to conceive more efficient ways to get the message across, which inevitably shifts the focus from TV commercials to digital." 
We catch up with Boon at the production company's Kerkstraat headquarters, from where the agency hawks its very own blend of filmmaking, animation and technology to clients as diverse as Adidas, CNN, Levi's and Nissan. Our meeting comes as the buzz is spreading around Sony's new HD ad for horror survival game The Last of Us, created by Minivegas and 180 Amsterdam, which Boon describes as "an incredibly exciting project". 
"It required taking very sophisticated game-play graphics and merging them with the real-life environment of a man, in his living room," he says. "We have created an ad that is not only true to the game it promotes, but adds a new dimension of engagement." 
For these type of campaigns, Boon says working across platforms is essential, and luckily it is something "that has always come naturally" in Amsterdam. While digital is a big part of the agency's output, "advertisers want to see strong synergy between all areas" of a campaign, "which is why it's great that there is such a culture here of multidisciplinary agencies". 
As the trend of Amsterdam becoming ever more important on the international stage continues, and global brands flock to the city to set up European hubs, Boon explains that it leads to a "knock-on effect for the industry," with "more international work, bigger budgets and a creative industry that is driven to create increasingly innovative, compelling campaigns". 
It seems that this small city, brimming with clients and agencies, large and small and local and international, has created the perfect, all-encompassing <keyword id="35666" type="COMPANY" weightage="100" keywordseo="advertising">advertising</keyword> ecology for digital companies to thrive in. 
"Plus," says Tribal DDB's Hoes, "there's bitterballen and Gay Pride".

An Inside Look At Amsterdam's Burgeoning Digital Advertising Scene

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Sahil Dua taught himself the basics of software engineering while at university.</li><li>Dua shares the résumé that helped him land his first job, a software development role in Amsterdam.</li></ul>Sahil Dua's journey into software and computer science began with a robotics competition.In his first year of college in Delhi, where he studied electronics engineering, he started building some robots with friends. He soon realized he was more passionate about software than hardware, which led him to learn outside the classroom."Everything I learned in computer science is actually what I learned in my own time on top of studying for my electronics degree as well," he told Business Insider.Over the next three years of university, Dua taught himself coding and learned about different operating systems and networks. He applied those lessons at several tech internships and by cofounding a startup.While students in India often seek job placements through their university, Dua proactively applied to jobs on his own as well, including opportunities overseas.This is the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/resume-engineer-meta-sap-salesforce-tesla-amazon-linkedin-jobs-branding-2024-4">résumé </a>he used to land a software development graduate program role at Booking.com in Amsterdam right after college. Later, he used an updated version of that résumé — with the same template — for a software engineering role at Google, where he's worked for more than four years.Dua is currently a senior machine learning engineer at Google's Zurich office.BI has verified his employment history.<div type="image" title="The resume template Dua used to apply to Booking.com in 2016." height="1650" width="1275" msid="109868362" hostid="261" sizebytes="165432"></div>Looking back on the document, Dua said two things on his résumé helped in his job search. He would also change two things if he were a junior developer now.<ol><li>Emphasize projects: Dedicating a section to projects and listing them out helped give interviewers starting points for discussion before he had a lot of job experience, he said. "Those projects would make me stand out because they demonstrated that I had practical experience, even when I was looking for a job straight out of university." Dua said he applies the same principle to his LinkedIn profile, where he lists 26 projects.</li><li>Use unique formats: Dua wanted a template to solve two purposes. First, he found that a single-column <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/google-job-resume-tips-machine-learning-specialist-career-switch-2024-4">résumé</a> would not give him enough space to list everything. "The second reason was that I wanted my résumé to stand out" but also not be so "extreme that it seems weird to look at," he said about his two-column template. He found this template on <a target="_blank" href="https://github.com/deedy/Deedy-Resume">GitHub</a>.</li></ol>While he would make a couple of tweaks, such as removing links to his personal Twitter account and decreasing emphasis on education, there are two other ways he would enhance his profile now.<ol><li>Build a personal brand: Dua said that he would revamp the "achievements" section of his résumé to include projects such as giving talks at technical conferences. Speaking at events like Python-focused conference PyCon gave him visibility within the industry, even in the early years of his career, and led to the opportunity to write a book.</li><li>Make yourself searchable online: Dua adds links to his online profiles on his résumé and takes steps to build more <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/poached-then-laid-off-sharing-updates-linkedin-unemployment-networking-2024-4">online visibility.</a> "Anytime I'm doing any courses online, I make sure that I post it on LinkedIn as a certificate," he said about learning new skills like machine learning. This ensures that "my profile is getting clicks or it's getting up there when people are searching for those fields." On LinkedIn, he uses his current job section to add more about his role and achievements than his one-page résumé allows.Career experts recommend Dua's approach to enhancing LinkedIn profiles to be more search-friendly.Recruiters actively seek candidates using keywords, said Nick Shah, founder of Peterson Technology Partners, a 26-year-old tech staffing agency based in Park Ridge, Illinois."Job seekers should research the keywords that are relevant to their industry and incorporate them into their profile to increase their chances of appearing in search results and catching the attention of recruiters," Shah <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-use-linkedin-to-find-new-job-keywords-comparison-2024-4">previously told BI</a>.Shah said job seekers should clearly define their roles in LinkedIn's work experience section and provide examples and achievements, much like what Dua does on his profile.</li></ol>Do you work in tech, finance, or consulting and have a story to share about your personal résumé journey? Email this reporter at <a target="_blank" href="mailto:shubhangigoel@insider.com">shubhangigoel@insider.com</a>.

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Booking.com's global headquarter in Amsterdam looks 'sincerely quirky'. Check it out

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Liberalization in the FDI policy to favor several e-commerce companies in India

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An Inside Look At Amsterdam's Burgeoning Digital Advertising Scene

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A machine learning engineer shares the résumé template that got him his first job and his senior role at Google

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