Back to campus: Startups to fire up hiring engine for talent boost

After a prolonged period of layoffs and muted hiring, Indian startups are expected to ramp up talent acquisition this year by as much as 7 per cent compared to last year, according to human resources (HR) firm TeamLease.

Take the case of Zepto, which was the first unicorn of 2023.

Aadit Palicha, co-founder and chief executive officer of quick-commerce unicorn Zepto, said the company has been ramping up hiring in engin­eering roles. He has also been interacting on professional networking platforms like Grapevine to share how the firm hires.
 

“We are hiring more people. We have hired 200 engineers over the past 29 months. We are scaling up the engineering team, hiring around one engineer every alternate day,” he told Business Standard.

During the Grapevine session on December 10, 2023, Palicha also said users on the platform can reach out to the firm’s HR team for technology (tech) roles.

Startups are also starting to venture back to campuses to meet the demand for entry-level roles.

E-commerce unicorn Meesho recently announced that it hired more than 150 candidates in 2023 across roles like product, analytics, business, finance, and HR, among others from campuses, including IIT Bombay, Kharagpur, Kanpur, Madras, and Roorkee, Indian Institute of Science (IISC), and IIM Lucknow and Kozhikode, among others.

“Startups were not hiring much in 2022, while in 2023 the number of students hired by startups has gone up. Startups hiring on our campus have gone up by at least 30 per cent this year,” said Rohit Pandey, placement cell head at Greater Noida Institute of Technology (GNIOT).

During 2022’s recruitment cycle, around 28 startups visited GNIOT. This number increased to more than 35 in 2023.

“This year, the multinat­ional hiring numbers have gone down, which is filled up by product-based startups offering decent packages,” Pandey added.
 

Amity University in Noida has witnessed a similar uptick in startups visiting its campus. 

As many as 100 startups visited the university during 2023’s hiring cycle, and 225 students secured placements. This is up from 46 startups and 121 placements for the 2022 batch. In 2024 so far, 20 startups have already visited the campus with 80 placements.

Emails sent to IITs and IIMs remained unanswered until the time of going to press.

According to experts, large startups operating in well-funded sectors like financial tech (fintech), e-commerce, direct-to-consumer, and emerging tech are likely to lead recruitment this year. Hiring demand, largely fuelled by entry- and junior-level roles, has also led several startups to venture back to campuses.

This is a much-required respite for students who have been impacted by the slump in hiring. This is also coming after layoffs, where as many as 15,000 employees were laid off from about 100 startups — including unicorns (companies valued at over $1 billion) — in 2023.

More than 65 per cent of tech startup founders claimed they were hiring in 2023, according to a recent report by the National Association of Software and Service Companies-Zinnov.

Hiring among these startups increased by 20 per cent during the year compared to 2022. Moreover, they reported that the reduction in their workforce decreased by 7 per cent in 2023 compared to the previous year.

This talent acquisition is, however, primarily taking place among large, well-funded startups.

Tech and e-commerce startups are expected to increase hiring by over 7 per cent between January and June 2024, compared to the corresponding period last year, according to data from employability solutions firm TeamLease EdTech.

“Startups who have obtained Series A and B funding are the ones who are actively hiring. Firms in sectors like healthtech, fintech, and emerging tech (artificial intelligence, or AI, generative AI, blockchain, Cloud computing, etc) are said to hire in the next six months,” said Neeti Sharma, co-founder and president, TeamLease EdTech.

Meanwhile, companies operating in sectors that have notably not been able to generate much investor interest, such as edtech, enterprisetech, and mediatech, are staring at low to zero hiring.

Currently, hiring among unicorns and soonicorns (soon-to-be-unicorns) has increased between 2 per cent and 4 per cent, largely to maintain their headcount since 2023, according to Xpheno — a specialist staffing company. Meanwhile, small- to mid-range startups have refrained from expansion and even replacement hiring in most cases.

“As many as 40 per cent of 200 small to mid-sized startups we monitor show a net reduction in count due to attrition that has not been refilled,” said Kamal Karanth, co-founder, Xpheno.

Karanth, however, added that talent growth among unicorns and soonicorns is primarily taking place across engineering, sales, and support roles.

“Talent attracted by these companies is primarily spread across entry to mid-level skill sets. Product and tech roles in engineering and development functions remain the largest part of the active talent demand, with a 60 per cent contribution,” he said.

Green shoots

• Engineering colleges say startup hiring numbers went up in 2023
• Experts say well-funded startups in fintech, e-commerce, D2C, and tech will lead 2024 hiring
• Hiring across engineering, sales, and support roles
• E-commerce unicorn Meesho says it hired more than 150 candidates in 2023 from IITs and IIMs
• Zepto hired 200 engineers over 29 months; now adding one every alternate day