2024-10-17 06:30:13 :
BENGALURU/MUMBAI: With the job market still tepid, startups and e-commerce companies are likely to salvage the 2025 batch recruitment season at India’s top engineering and business schools by raising campus placement targets.
Manmeet Sandhu, head of human resources at fintech platform PhonePe, said: “For the upcoming employment season, we have set an ambitious target to hire more than 230 new employees across multiple positions, which is a 55% increase over last year.” To achieve this As a target, Sandhu said, “We are significantly expanding our presence in Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) and Indian Schools of Business (ISBs)” with the aim of increasing the recruitment ratio at these campuses from 15% to 25% this year%.
For startups, it marks a U-turn from the past two years when the industry outsourced hiring to cut costs. As some startups seek IPOs and expand operations, there is increased demand for young professionals in data analysis, sales, finance, project collaboration and implementation teams. This is in stark contrast to the overall mood, as universities expect the placement season to be as slow as last year, after two wars and a retreat from the pandemic-induced frenzy.
2,000 people to be resettled
Around 2,000 students are expected to be placed in a leading engineering college in Bengaluru next year. A placement director at the college said: “Of the 90 companies that registered to recruit in the past two months, around 36 were startups. We are seeing more startups coming to recruit this year. This has led to better recruitment Employment season is here for us this year.”
Online retailer Meesho has hired 150 graduates from the 2024 batch, mostly from IITs, IIITs and National Institutes of Technology (NITs). Meesho Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO) Ashish Kumar Singh said the company plans to “more than double this number this year” Mint. “Our hiring activity spans multiple key roles across key functional areas including analytics, technology, business, finance, product and design, and fulfillment and experience.”
Among the 23 Indian Institutes of Technology, first-generation institutes located in Kharagpur, Chennai (known as Madras), Mumbai, Delhi, Roorkee and Kanpur started their placement season in December. Placements will begin in August-September in second and third generation IITs and NIITs. Business schools, including the Indian Institute of Management, will start internships from February 2025.
While new-age startups are emerging, placement officers from older generation IITs say the institute cross-checks their authenticity. “We are studying the registered companies, their size, funding and other details before allowing them to be placed.”
Among the larger internet companies, “Zomato is already in discussions to hire employees from us,” the official said.
Hire the best people
According to the IIT placement team, Zomato recruits algorithm engineers and people with combined software developer, machine learning and data science skills.
Niharika Mohanty, Vice President, HR, Restaurant Search and Food Delivery Company said, “Zomato’s campus recruitment strategy focuses on recruiting the best talent in the market and not just IITs and IIMs. We are always on the lookout for talent. This will help us build a The organization of the future.”
Overall, placement teams at IITs and NITs expect hiring to slow down as companies in other sectors such as manufacturing, banking, financial services and automobiles will take time to consolidate their hiring numbers this year. Headwinds include wars in Europe and the Middle East, inflationary pressures and the U.S. presidential election, which could determine the outcome of offshoring policies.
However, for some new startups, recruiting from high-quality universities shows that they have the funds, capabilities and roles to attract top talent.
Software-as-a-service platform Fractal Analytics has laid out campus hiring plans for the next few years. “We recruit around 250 employees from university campuses every year, with 60% gender diversity. We intend to scale up campus recruitment to around 1,000 people in the next 2-3 years,” said Srikanth Velamakanni, co-founder. “Cloud and full stack engineer.
Business-to-business fintech platform Zaggle added more than 100 new employees in the first half of the fiscal year and plans to add another 100 new employees during the year to support its growth plans over the next 2-3 years.
Latha Iyer, chief human resource officer at Zaggle, said, “We have handpicked lateral talent from IIMs and have also brought in candidates from Tier II universities. We may look at hiring 15 to 20 people from various campuses for technical and non-technical functions. “
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