Ecommerce companies like Snapdeal, Flipkart and Zomato hiring senior-level talent from varied sectors ranging from FMCG to media for different managerial positions offering hefty salary package and the trend is growing. Executives from large multinationals including Google, Unilever and GSK are making a beeline for the new sunrise sector in the country, Indian e-commerce industry.
In April, Flipkart hired ex-Google top shot Peeyush Ranjan as its senior vice-president and head of engineering, earlier this month, it hired Motorola executive Punit Soni as a chief product officer. Snapdeal appointed Gaurav Gupta, who has been in Silicon Valley for a decade as vice-president of the engineering team at Snapdeal. Simplilearn brought in Ram Gupta, who has 25 years of experience working in the Silicon Valley.
The top executives who are being brought in to the country are offered anywhere between Rs 1 crore and Rs 5 crore. “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 Krishna Kumar, founder, Simplilearn. He added that money or perk are not the reason senior people are willing to work in this fledgling industry.
If the rumours of headhunting firms are to be believed, there will be more than 500 job openings with salaries of more than Rs 1 crore each this year. "We have 70-80% of our business coming from e-Commerce and expect to handle 180-200 mandates this year, up from 75-85 last year," Anshuman Das, managing partner, Longhouse Consulting, told. "We are filling in at least one position a day at the leadership level," GC Jayaprakash, executive director at RGF Executive Search, told.
"Investors are bringing hundreds of millions of dollars. We can spend it either on infrastructure or people. And that's what they are doing - investing in people," the human resource head of one of the leading online retailers told.
"This year also we are looking at 30-40% increase in hiring across the board and a corresponding increase in leadership levels," said Raj Raghavan, head-HR, Amazon India.
ABC Consultants has conducted more than 100 senior-level searches for ecommerce companies in the past six months, said Director Siddharth Raisurana.
"We have 70-80% of our business coming from ecommerce and expect to handle 180-200 mandates this year, up from 75-85 last year," said Anshuman Das, managing partner, Longhouse Consulting.
Saurabh Nigam, VP, HR at Snapdeal said leadership hiring has gone up, given the business growth. "We're a 5,000 people strong team now, and need to beef up our leadership hiring."
By Premji
