Hiring spree: Unicorns splurge on high-cost talent

Unicorns in the startup ecosystem are not just attracting funds but also recruiting high-cost talent from diverse sectors to helm critical functions, with Oyo, Zomato and Swiggy leading the table for top hires. Over a dozen prized startups — the valuations of which crossed $1 billion recently — have added more than 350 director and CXO level hires over the last two years, according to research by specialist staffing company Xpheno.

Leading companies in the fast moving consumer goods, telecom, banking, insurance, financial services, ecommerce and information technology sectors have emerged as favourite hunting grounds for top talent.

Oyo, Swiggy and Zomato have hired 214 people for top leadership positions.

“With fresh funding coming in, the Unicorns have been in a rush to deploy them by scaling up and creating new businesses, and they need senior leaders to lead the scale up,” said Kamal Karanth, co-founder of Xpheno.

“In the high stakes game of internet consumer startups, the need for last mile connectivity has created lakhs of jobs at the bottom of the pyramid. However, when some of these became unicorns by virtue of their ability to raise funds they also created high-paying jobs,” Karanth said.

For instance, online food delivery start-up Swiggy, which is currently present in more than 120 cities, hired its first chief financial officer, chief operating officer and head of engineering last year.

“Given this scale, it was key for us to strengthen our leadership last year in the form of our first CFO, COO and Head of Engineering along with VPs across business, product, new initiatives and engineering functions,” said Girish Menon, VP - HR, Swiggy.

The Bengaluru-based company, which said in December it had raised $800 million in fresh capital and also facilitated $200 million in secondary share sale by some early investors, is currently looking for leaders in data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence.

“We will continue hiring leaders in product and engineering functions as well as look for business builders to head new categories as we expand,” said Menon.

Hospitality chain Oyo Hotels & Homes, which has committed an investment of Rs 1,400 crore to its India expansion, plans to improve capabilities across technology, operations and civil engineering while also deep diving into areas such as data sciences, distribution and design to attract high-quality talent.

“We are rapidly increasing our India and global talent pool in both technology and business development teams. Globally, we have about 1,000 engineers and aim to increase headcount in India and internationally, aggressively,” said Dinesh Ramamurthi, CHRO, Oyo Hotels & Homes.

“We have seen a 3X growth in technology and sales employees hiring from 2017 to 2019 so far,” he said. Hiring of specialists in emerging and pioneering technologies has increased to more than 600 so far in the year, from 100 in 2017, while business development teams multiplied to over 750 as of last year, from 170 in 2017, he added.

Food delivery app Zomato, which has been aggressively expanding, has almost doubled in strength to a team of 5,000 people.

“One of our core focuses for 2019 is to continue to strengthen our engineering team, and while we are enthusiastic about our current leadership team in place, we will continue infusing new talent as per the needs of the business,” a Zomato spokesperson said.

The average salary of these high-level recruits is over Rs 60 lakh, with about 20% of those in the range of Rs 1-1.5 crore, according to Xpheno’s estimates. The value of employee stock options is also substantial and has varied with each hire.

Over 20% of these leadership hires (director and above) are from premier institutes such as IITs and IIMs. Nearly 30% are from other top-ranked B-schools such as XLRI, FMS, SP Jain, NMIMS, Symbiosis, TAPMI, IMT, and engineering colleges like BITS Pilani, and premier NITs including Trichy, Surathkal and Allahabad.

The largest pool of leaders was from marketing, sales and product teams, followed by the logistics/supply chain and technology roles, according to Xpheno. The average experience of these professionals was in the range of 12 to 15 years.

Source:-https://retail.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/industry/hiring-spree-unicorns-splurge-on-high-cost-talent/69017675