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While its owner Walmart plans to lay off 60 per cent of Jabong’s 450 employees, Flipkart is all set to ramp up its technology team by an additional 500 tech hires with 3-8 years of experience, over the next 2-3 months, revealed sources who know of Flipkart’s tech requirements.
India’s largest e-tailer is pulling out all stops to take on arch rival Amazon that is innovating at a furious pace to get onboard the next 150 million shoppers from smaller towns to shop on Amazon.in.
“We have been tasked with filling 400 tech positions across all bands of technology talent for Flipkart, however, the bulk of the demand is for talent with 2-5 years of experience,” one of Flipkart’s IT recruitment vendors, told BusinessLine .
Another IT recruitment vendor of Flipkart’s said they have received a requisition for over 100 open positions in the engineering and product side, which needs to be filled in the next couple of months.
Besides its internal talent sourcing team, Flipkart has an active IT recruitment vendor base of 5-6 firms.
No lay-off for techies
While Walmart-led lay-offs at Flipkart will most likely be carried out across functions to reduce flab and redundancies, especially in functions such as operations, there is no likelihood of lay-offs on the technology side of the business as Flipkart, just like Amazon does, aims to woo the next 100 million users to shop on its marketplace.
The e-tailer is investing heavily in putting together a data sciences team and is scouting for talent from the Bay Area for the same, despite its high profile hire, Punit Soni who was hired as Head of Products, quitting in a year’s time.
Tackling attrition
“The two-way integration of systems between Flipkart and Walmart warrants an addition of 500 or more on Flipkart’s technology team. So, it doesn’t come as a surprise that Flipkart is ramping up its technology team,” said Sanchit Vir Gogia, Chief Analyst, Greyhound Research.
Some of the 500 new hires will be made to back-fill for attrition that is bound to take place when there are top management exits. In this case, founder Binny Bansal’s resignation and when those aligned with his vision will exit the company. Then there are employees who have already vested 50 per cent of their stock options when Walmart acquired majority stake in Flipkart, who will leave in due course after encashing the rest.
Some attrition at the tech leadership whose stock options are vested, can be expected, as they have made their money, said a HR consultant, who works with start-ups.
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