Startups board express train chasing top talent in 2022

Mumbai: Indian unicorns and soonicorns have accelerated their talent hunt in 2022 amid sustained investor interest in the country’s booming startup ecosystem.

Net headcount at startups rose more than 11% in the first two months of this year compared with a year earlier, show data from specialist staffing firm Xpheno. Headcount grew 21% at soonicorns and 10% at unicorns, show the data shared exclusively with ET.

Thirteen startups joined the unicorn list during this period, and there are several more that are expected to soon make the cut with billion-dollar-plus valuations.


Some of the new-age companies that are on an aggressive hunt for talent are Meesho, PhonePe, Mamaearth, Good Glamm Group, Licious, Apna.co, Wakefit, Classplus, Purplle, Spinny, Darwinbox, Lead school, Sugar Cosmetics and Boat.

“The Indian startup ecosystem continues to register positive net employment as it has been over the last five quarters,” said Kamal Karanth, cofounder, Xpheno. “Despite high attrition figures and increased gross hiring action, startups continue to attract and onboard talent to support their growth plans,” he added.

There are also a handful of companies such as PrepLadder, Trell, OK Credit and Lido which in recent months trimmed their teams to either pivot to new lines of business or to tide over slowing business cycles. Bounce and Pagarbook too had cut jobs in the last 12 months. However, investors, founders and job market experts are of the view that these headcount reductions do not denote a slowdown and hiring would only increase going forward.

“Hiring has continued to accelerate this year. In 2021, nearly $45 billion got invested in startups and 20% of that is usually invested in people and organisational expansion. This means that startups will have to hire lakhs of people not just in technology but across the spectrum,” said Pranav Pai, managing partner at venture capital firm 3one4 Capital.

There are currently more than 365,000 people employed by India’s unicorns and soonicorns. The headcount growth registered by this cohort over the past two years was 40%.

Also Read: Indian unicorns set to continue their hiring spree in 2022

Ecommerce company Meesho will add 1,500 new recruits this year. “In the last one year alone, our business has grown more than 10x, which has resulted in the expansion of teams across the board, especially technology and product,” chief HR officer Ashish Kumar Singh said.

Used-car retailing platform Spinny plans to hire more than 2,000 by this year-end, taking the headcount to over 6,000, said founder Niraj Singh.

Mamaearth, which became a unicorn in January, is looking to add over 300 people across technology, data, growth marketing and offline sales functions to support its growth plans, said the personal care firm’s cofounder, Varun Alagh.

Recruitment startup Apna.co, which became a unicorn last September, will hire 400 professionals, chief operating officer Karna Chokshi said. Digital adoption platform Whatfix, meanwhile, plans to recruit around 350 people, said Romita Mukherjee, global senior director, HR.

Digital payments company PhonePe is looking to hire “at scale across multiple levels, functions and locations”, said Manmeet Sandhu, head of HR.

The year 2022 started on a strong note for Indian startups which raised more than $12 billion since January, or one-third of the total funding seen last year. In calendar year 2021, startups had raised $36 billion, a nearly three-fold increase from $11.4 billion the previous year.

Industry experts said it was a show of continuation of the long-term investor belief in the India tech story and demand for talent would continue to be the highlight as more companies embark upon their growth plans.

“All growth-stage investments will continue to grow in a big way and with everyone having ambitious growth plans, demand for people, especially in deep tech and other new emerging technologies, will continue to remain high,” said Amit Nawka, partner-deals and startups leader at PwC India.