Indian startups' hiring spree continues amid record funding this year

New Delhi: It is a mad rush for talent across unicorns in India.
There are nearly 70 unicorns — startups valued at $1 billion or more — in India and these are likely to create 125,000-160,000 white-collar jobs over the next two-three quarters, according to two separate studies conducted by EMA Partners and CIEL HR Services for ET.

Unicorns like CRED, Meesho, Vedantu and BrowserStack are all ramping up their teams, their executives told ET.

According to the EMA study conducted in September, unicorns have hired close to 150,000 executives over the last three quarters. It shows that an additional 125,000 executives are going to be hired over the next two quarters.

A large proportion of the hiring, up to 70%, will be for technology roles alone, with a focus on talent like full stack developers, data scientists, solution architects and principal engineers.

“This only includes the white-collar jobs and does not include blue/grey-collar hiring. Also, there are many ‘soonicorns’ (soon to be unicorns) which are hiring significant numbers and they are not part of this study,” said A Ramachandran, CEO, new business initiatives, at executive search firm EMA Partners India.

The other study conducted by CIEL HR Services, a recruitment and staffing firm, shows that 53% of hiring done by unicorns this year was in fintech, tech platforms and software-as-a-service (SaaS) segments.

“45% of these unicorns are on a hiring spree, expanding quickly. Their combined intent is to hire about 160,000 people in 12 months from July 2021,” CIEL HR Services CEO Aditya Misra told ET.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, CRED, one of the new unicorns, has added 350 people and currently has a headcount of more than 500 people.

“As our focus is on scaling existing offerings and building new product lines, we are constantly looking to expand our team across functions, including tech,” said Amanpreet Kaur, its head of talent and culture.

CRED is currently valued at $2.2 billion post its Series D funding and is looking at growing the headcount to over 800 soon by hiring another 300 people in the coming months, Kaur said.

While edtech unicorn Vedantu is looking at adding 1,000 people including tech talent over the coming months, even as it is aiming to set foot in international markets in the next 12-15 months.

“Vedantu's revenue grew almost 4.5x last year alone as Covid-19 provided tailwinds for digital learning formats,” CEO Vamsi Krishna said.

The edtech company is currently clocking $65 million in annual revenue run-rate, he said.


BrowserStack, another startup that joined the unicorn club this year, is planning to hire about 700 people in the coming months and for the next 12 to 18 months, it is targeting to double its headcount to about 1,600.

“We’re aggressively hiring to support our continued growth. For instance, since March 2020, we have grown from 300 to 800 plus, during the pandemic,” said Gerald Menezes, vice president, people, at BrowserStack.

BrowserStack, which Menezes said is valued at $4 billion after its $200 million Series B funding, is looking at hiring for positions in sales, product management, marketing, design and finance.

For ecommerce platform Meesho, the pace of hiring is the highest ever. “We know that the next wave of growth will only come if we rapidly innovate and increase employee strength, and are hiring more aggressively than ever before,” chief HR officer Ashish Singh said. Meesho currently has 1,200 full-time employees.