Amid coronavirus, some start-ups are hiring, giving salary hikes and bonuses
4 min read 21 May 2020, 04:41 PM ISTBangalore-based NoBroker.com said that it is hiring over 100 people and hiking salaries of its existing staffNobroker.com claims to be one of the best paymasters and the salary at entry level starts from ₹6 lakh per annum
PremiumEven as several start-ups continue to lay off employees, others in segments like education, real estate and logistics have seen business growing, fuelled by a surge in demand for their products during coronavirus and are hiring across roles. For some, even salary hikes and promotions are on the cards.
Messaging app Hike, started by Kavin Bharti Mittal, is hiring for over 20 open positions across roles as it is working towards scaling its products. Hike will be onboarding freshers from colleges, as part of its ZeroTo2 program for roles in design, marketing, technologies like artificial intelligence & machine learning, engineering and user research among others.
Hike’s customer base consists of users less than 24 years of age, which makes hiring young people on their team important. “As we scale, we aim to hire across teams through innovative remote initiatives as well as making efforts to reach out to talent in need of opportunities," said Anshuman Mishra, vice-president, operations, Hike.
For its current requirements, Hike is also mapping and prioritizing those candidates facing job and salary cuts and is working on launching a social recruitment campaign to reach out to those facing a job crunch.
At a time when most real estate companies are laying off staff and cutting salaries, Bangalore-based NoBroker.com said that it is hiring over 100 people and hiking salaries of its existing staff. The hiring, which is already in process, will be across marketing, business, operations and tech functions to support growth.
The company is planning to give salary hikes in the range of 7-25% to its 1,500 strong workforce. “We are going ahead with the bonuses and are looking to hire people with 4-5 years of experience. We think enough talent is available in the market and in the coming days, we want to increase our market share," said Akhil Gupta, co-founder and CTO, Nobroker.com.
NoBroker.com has been growing during the last one and half months despite the challenging market situations and even managed to raise $30 million in its Series D round in April. “In the last 15 days, the number of enquiries has jumped up. A lot of people are looking to upgrade themselves to a bigger house. A majority of the fresh hiring will be for those from a technology background to support our growth as we shift to online tech," said Amit Agarwal, CEO and Co-Founder Nobroker.com.
These start-ups are offering salaries at par with the market. Nobroker.com claims to be one of the best paymasters and the salary at entry level starts from ₹6 lakh per annum and depending on experience can go up to ₹40-50 lakh, especially for tech skillsets.
Others echo the same sentiment.
“We are offering salaries at par with the industry standards. For some positions we have seen corrections in expectations as well. There is a lack of opportunities in the market and while we respect the position of leverage, cutting the new hires short on low salaries will basically mean we lose them as soon as the market bounces back so we are sticking to what our budgets on those positions were. And yes, we are getting better resources as a start up compared to pre-covid environment," says Ankit Chaudhari, Co-founder, Aiisma, a data marketplace that is also hiring.
Edtech businesses are also hiring as they have seen a boom with students and professionals swarming online classes during the last two months.
Noida-based Classplus has expanded its team and made strategic hires in the past two months, across engineering and business verticals. Many other Ed tech companies like Upgrad, Simplilearn, Udemy are looking at creating at least 3,000 new jobs. Most of these companies are hiring at entry-level, mainly in tech and product.
Online test preparation platform Gradeup is hiring across roles in technology, product and sales, besides recruiting new faculty. “We have been hiring 30-40 people for these categories in May. With an increase in demand due to the covid-19 situation, our requirement in academic positions have specifically gone up. At the same time we are also scaling up on the sales team to cater to the demand of online classes which were provided by offline institutes in the past," said Shobhit Bhatnagar co-founder GradeUp. Gradeup’s onboarding induction programs are completely digitized and they have designed online modules for all functions, added Bhatnagar.
Digital payments and solutions startup Xpay.life is hiring around 100 people as it has witnessed a spike of more than 200% growth in bill payments through its channels. The National Payments Corporation of India approved bill payment platform is hiring across roles like Business Development, SEO, Digital Marketing and other tech roles.
“We have seen 234% plus growth in Recurring Utility Bill Payments from our application. The application is configured and designed in a simple manner that anyone can use it. The interview process has already started and people will be joining once the lockdown will be lifted," said Rohit Kumar, Co-Founder & CEO, Xpay.Life.
Xpay.life is offering developers and content writers with 5 years experience ₹6 lakh per annum, while for technology roles the salary is around ₹10 lakh per year.
Logistic start-ups also saw a boom with supply chain becoming integral for E-commerce companies. No wonder, Clickpost onboarded new clients during the pandemic and has increased headcount by more than 30% during the covid period. “We've hired and onboarded talent using remote working tools and have been successfully able to integrate them well within the team," said Naman Vijay CEO and Co-Founder, Clickpost.
