IndiaMart to hire 500 people in the next three months

Firm plans to focus 70% of new hires on strengthening sales; 150 people set to join next month

IndiaMart, a B2B e-commerce firm, is planning to hire 500 people across its sales force before October, the company said. 

“About 70% of the new hires will be focussed on strengthening the sales forces, with about 150 people being on-boarded in August,” said Madhup Agarwal, national head HR, IndiaMart.

The company has a staff strength of about 3,500 people. “The new addition to the sales force will help us increase our customer acquisition rate,” he said. 

IndiaMart, the company claims, adds 5,000 customers a month and plans to ramp it up to 10,000 by the end of the financial year. “It will not just be the sales force that will be responsible for increasing the customer number. We are using different channels, opening new branches and improving operational efficiency to add and retain customers,” said Agarwal. 

Usually, at tech companies, adding customers doesn’t particularly need an addition of workforce. But IndiaMart also has a high attrition rate. “We lose 60-70% of them every year. We plan to improve it to 35%,” he said.

Agarwal explained that the company planned to change by introducing training programmes and easy “promotion metrics”. He denied that overhiring was the flavour of the season and said no retrenchment was on the cards. 

The company, however, did lay off people last year when it had outsourced a division. It also had to let people go when it shut down processes. Agarwal said that it was natural churn and it is difficult to imagine that happening anymore.