Flush with fresh funds and business growth, start-ups stepped up hiring in 2020 even as larger corporates limited staff addition in order to save cash. Employee addition, which began climbing in the April-June quarter of 2019 reached its zenith in 2020, and is expected to maintain the trajectory in the coming years.

Vedantu topped the charts with net addition of 5,093 people in 2020, a 381 per cent rise from the year-ago period, followed by Ecom Express (4,733), NoBroker (2,625) and Delhivery (1,418). Unacademy (1,242), Fincare Small Finance Bank (1,232), Licious (1,181) and Udaan (1,076) were the others in the top 10 staff addition list, according to data collated by data research firm Tracxn.

More job opportunities

Pravin Prakash, Chief People Officer at BYJU'S, told BusinessLine , “The pandemic has caused a paradigm shift in the field of education. Online learning has become a vital part of mainstream education. This transition and increased acceptance have boosted the ed-tech sector as a whole. The growing ed-tech landscape has created more job opportunities that are location-agnostic, talent-driven, and tailor-made to the skill-sets of an employee.”

“Last year, we did significant hires and on-boarded new employees virtually and seamlessly across roles and domains,” he added. On its part, BYJU'S has also been on a recruiting spree, and has a total headcount of 10,000.

Indian start-ups raised about $9.3 billion in 2020, a substantial amount in a year of slowdown, even though it was much lesser than the $14.5-billion raised in calendar 2019. The sector saw the emergence of 11 Unicorns.

Dhianu Das, co-founder, Agility Venture Partners, said: “There is a shift in doing business from the traditional way to new-age tech start-ups way, which is the focus of start-ups, leading to the creation of micro-entrepreneurs. This is resulting in creating a number of direct and indirect jobs in the start-up ecosystem. About 60 per cent of every dollar raised goes to the employee as direct wages or outsourced resources, which is also about creating jobs.”

“With our expanding footprint across regions and geographies, we plan to recruit about 6,000-8,000 employees across technical and non-technical roles in the coming months in addition to our current 10,000 strong team. Technology hiring will take centre stage this year at BYJU’S. We will also make significant top-level hiring who can spearhead our various initiatives,” Prakash added.

Start-ups are expected to generate 1 million new jobs in the near future.

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