Head honchos are making a beeline for start-ups

As the Indian start-up ecosystem gears up for its next phase of growth, there is a heightened interest in — and a need for — experienced talent.

The last 3-4 years, which witnessed the birth of e-commerce firms and several technology start-ups, have also seen increased demand for young and fresh talent.

Recently, there has been a slight shift in this trend with increased demand for experienced hands and senior talent.

Many head honchos of large Indian corporate firms and global companies are now joining these start-ups. Pankaj Minglani, Principal Consultant, Career Shapers HR Consulting, said that the trend has been very visible in the past six months.

For instance, Flipkart hired Sanjay Baweja from Tata Communications as CFO, appointed Aditya Agarwal from Dropbox to its board, roped in Rishi Vasudev, ex-CEO of Calvin Klein, as VP (fashion retail), and Parameswaran Balakrishnan from Toyota as VP, HR (supply chain).

QwikCilver, a five-year-old online gifting solutions provider, has hired senior executives from IBM, Levis and Dell.

Online managed marketplace Shopclues has had over 12 senior hires in the last six months. “As we prepare for the next level of growth, we have got in senior-level talent in technology and business operations,” said co-founder Radhika Ghai Aggarwal. Vikram Chopra, Founder of Fabfurnish.com, said that with such top talent, the company aims to clock ₹600 crore in revenue next year from a mere ₹2 crore in 2011.

Ankur Singla, founder of Akosha.com, a venture that resolves online consumer complaints, said: “We are now seeing that instead of us (start-ups) chasing the best people, the best people are now finding us.” Akosha has hired seven senior top executives in the last six months — all alumni of IITs and IIMs — across the marketing, account management and technology functions. While for starts-ups, it is critical to hire good and experienced people to drive growth and profits, for the senior executives, the draw is the sense of ownership, the challenges and learning opportunities, attractive rewards such as stock options and profit sharing, and the freedom to innovate.

“Start-ups have the biggest challenge of building a product and sustaining business in the initial days. Given that, getting bright and right people on board is very important and unavoidable,” said Sidharth Agarwal, Director of Spectrum Talent Management, a firm that hunts talent for new businesses.

Rajiv Burman, Managing Partner at executive search firm Lighthouse Partners, says that as India emerges as a potential start-up destination, it is also creating niche opportunities.

According to Manusis Technologies, this trend is especially prevalent in the telecom, IT /ITeS, retail, manufacturing and engineering sectors.

The fact that middle-level employees are able to take up leadership positions at start-ups is a big factor driving them to leave big organisations.

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