It looks like the year 2019 is going to be a good one for those seeking for employment opportunities, substantially from startup companies in the e-commerce sector. Having said that, most of the job postings will be from tech startups dealing with advanced areas of artificial intelligence, big data and machine learning. In this year alone, the startup companies have already chalked out ambitious plans to create more job opportunities following their recent funding rounds.
Well-financed startups like Healthians, Milkbasket, Car24, Instamojo are already making arrangements to raise their headcount by over 50 percent than they did last 2018. On the other hand, established companies like Zomato, Oyo and Swiggy plan on increasing by 30 percent as they target new markets.
Tens of Thousands of Tech Startup Jobs
“Tech startups would add over 40,000 additional new jobs in 2019,” the Economic Times quoted KS Viswanathan, vice-president, industry initiatives, at industry body Nasscom, as saying.
According to Nasscom, the number of tech startups has virtually doubled from 2015 with a 55% growth in jobs in those that raised funds in the recent year.
This has become a major reason for a small increase in hiring as these startup companies are building their tech team in order to extensively use advanced technologies to understand customer behaviour and rake in bigger financial gains.
Startup Company Employment: A Rise Not Just in Numbers but in Quality
In 2018, the IT service companies and tech startups together are estimated to have hired 350,000 to 400,000 people.
This is in contrast in the recent years wherein entry-level compensation packages had not gone up, demoralising people like IT engineers. Despite that, with the new year upon us, entry-level packages across the tech sector will be able to see a notable rise, going up by as much as 20 percent.
This is supported by TV Mohandas Pai, the former chief financial officer of IT major Infosys Ltd, telling PTI, “The year 2019 is going to be better for entry-level guys because hiring is going to be much better.”
Job postings will continue to increase but so does the quality of it as for many years, in India, software engineers are only paid as much as delivery boys in the cities.
Entry level packages are now pegged to be at Rs 450,000 to Rs 500,000 per annum. The reasoning behind it being startup companies are now more than willing to pay better to attract more competent individuals to build their tech teams.
Pai listed greater use artificial intelligence and machine learning in enterprises, greater thrust on digitisation, bigger spending by BFSI (banking, financial services, insurance) in America, as being growth opportunities for Indian IT companies in 2019, which will also see them look for greater penetration into Europe and Asia.
Indian Startups By the Numbers
The Indian startup ecosystem is bustling like never before. In 2018 until September, a total of 1,200 new tech startups were added, including eight unicorns. This is said to be the highest number in a calendar year in the Indian startup history.
Currently, startup companies have a total of 600,000 employees in India.
“In the coming calendar year, my estimation is they (startups) will hire about 200,000 people. In 2018, I think they hired 150,000 people”, said Pai, also Chairman of Manipal Global Education Services, and Aarin Capital, and a member of the Board of Directors of the National Stock Exchange of India Limited.
He also added that, “Totally between IT services and start-ups, my estimate is 450,000 to 500,000 people will be hired (in India in 2019).”
Furthermore, a recent report by knowledge portal Analytics Vidhya and ed-tech platform Great Learnings reveal that more than 50,000 positions related to data and analytics are currently vacant in India.
It is also said that by 2020, around 39,000 analytics jobs will be created in India. At the same time, cybersecurity will create 5,000 jobs in data and analytics, healthcare 15,000, genomic 2,000 and space exploration 350 by 2020, as stated in the report.
To top all that, according to a recent India Skills Report, almost 64 per cent of employers across the industry have a positive outlook on hiring with 20 percent saying that they would hire the same number of people they hired in 2018. Ultimately, only a small number have a negative viewpoint for 2019.
