As digital tills ring, fintech on hiring spree

The Covid-19 pandemic has proved to be a watershed moment for the fintech industry. From consumers to kirana shops, the proliferation of digital payments and cashless transactions has placed the industry in a higher orbit. While most industries are struggling to recover from the Covid onslaught, and letting staff go, fintech players are on a hiring spree as digital payments are predicted to surge even in the post-pandemic world.

“The fintech sector is at its exciting best now with everyone wanting to have an e-commerce presence. While there are massive layoffs happening around, we are seeing this as an opportunity to hire great minds and make quality additions to build a league of next-gen payment and banking solutions,” said Anuradha Bharat, Head - People Operations at Razorpay.

The full-stack financial services company has already onboarded over 120 employees in the last two months and is looking to add 200 more at different levels in the next few months, primarily for its product and engineering teams.

According to a recent report by RedSeer Consulting, digital payments in India are expected to treble to ₹7,092-lakh crore by 2025 from ₹2,153-lakh crore in FY20 while mobile payments are poised for 5x growth during this period. The report said strong use cases of merchant payments, government policies around financial inclusion, growth of millennials, and high smartphone penetration indicates strong headroom for growth.

“Covid has accelerated the adoption of digitisation in financial products. Put together, the top three payment gateways, the open positions would touch about 10,000 jobs if not more,” Sumit Kumar, Vice-President, National Employability through Apprenticeship Program at TeamLease, said, adding, “as demand for the talent increases, we have also seen an increased adoption of apprenticeships in the fintech sector. The demand for apprentices has doubled compared to pre- Covid.”

Top-level hiring

Fintech companies are also strengthening their top management to bolster their growth. Leading payment gateway provider PayU roped in Shantanu Preetam as PayU India’s Chief Technology Officer in May, while joined Vikas Sekhri as Chief Product Officer of PayU Finance in April, and Anup Agrawal took over as Business Head of LazyPay.

“Our hiring plans are very much on track and more than 100 new employees have joined PayU across our four offices since March 2020,” Priya Cherian, Chief People Officer at PayU said, adding, “Hiring for Data Sciences, Product, Tech and Sales teams will be our focus over the next few months.”

Similarly, slice, a payment and credit start-up exclusively focussed on youngsters between 18-29 years, made a slew of top management hiring including CFO,CTO, Head of Design and Head of Collections. The company, which has 250,000 customers, is looking to reach a customer base of one million in 12-15 months.

“Growth can really flood you if you are not prepared and you will get drowned if the processes are not set. So, it's important to have the right set of people at senior and mid-management level in a business like ours which has a lot of implications on customers, regulations and risk side of the business,” said Rajan Bajaj, Founder and CEO at slice.