The Rs 80,000-crore-plus Indian e-commerce industry is attracting top talent in hordes from across sectors and geographies. Driven by the high pace of growth of the local e-commerce segment, senior executives from large multinationals like Google, Uniliver and GSK are making a beeline for the new sunrise sector in the country.
Companies like Snapdeal, Flipkart and Zomato have recently hired senior-level talent from varied sectors ranging from FMCG to media for different managerial positions and the trend is growing. In April, Flipkart hired ex-Google top shot Peeyush Ranjan as its senior vice-president and head of engineering, while earlier this month, it hired Motorola executive Punit Soni as a chief product officer. On Wednesday, Snapdeal appointed Gaurav Gupta, who has been in Silicon Valley for a decade, to strengthen its technology team. He is vice-president of the engineering team at Snapdeal. Simplilearn brought in Ram Gupta, who has 25 years of experience working in the Silicon Valley, on its board a few days ago.
As e-commerce has taken off over the years, and has grown manifold, the experience required for senior-level positions is also shaping up to be more nuanced. “With our growth over the years, our work structure has evolved and new positions have come in. We have also become very specific in terms of what kind of people and experience we would need,” said Saurabh Nigam, vice-president, HR, Snapdeal.
According to Krishna Kumar, founder, Simplilearn, the top executives who are being brought in to the country are offered anywhere between Rs 1 crore and Rs 5 crore, which, he says is already a norm in the US. “People who went to the US 10-15 years ago to work in Silicon Valley companies now want to come back for various reasons, both personal and professional,” said Kumar. He said money or perk are not the reason senior people are willing to work in this fledgling industry.
“The work environment, challenges involved and the sheer amount of problems to solve gives them a sense of entrepreneurial spirit. This opportunity is why top talents are getting attracted here,” Kumar added.
Snapdeal says in its yearn to hire senior people from diverse sectors, it has ended up mapping the industry to accommodate different managerial positions. “The industry is in such a nascent stage that we can’t hire people from other start-ups. Therefore, for each of these verticals we objectively looked at prospective industries from where we could hire. For supply chain operations, we want to look at people from FMCG background or a retail background. These are the industries where a lot of logistics and distribution takes place,” said Nigam.
Rituparna Chakraborty, president, Indian Staffing Federation, an apex autonomous body for flexi-staffing, said the lure of being in India at this point is being sold because the India story is big. “A lot of expats are getting on with the prospect of growth in Indian technology companies, which I think is non-existent or fewer in number in their country. When you join a growing organisation at a nascent stage you also get entrepreneurial liberties, which is a big factor for talents, especially at a senior level,” she said.
For Updates Check Company News; follow us on Facebook and Twitter
