India Internet Day 2021: Techies are the hardest to bring back to office

The stellar public market debuts of Zomato, Nazara, and Freshworks have set the stage for the upcoming rush of tech IPOs as at least half a dozen startups including Paytm, PolicyBazaar, Nykaa, Mobikwik, and Ixigo are looking to go public this year.

It has also been a record-breaking year in terms of funding for domestic startups, with the Indian startup ecosystem minting 27 unicorns so far this year and investors pumping in around $23.5 billion until now, according to Pitchbook data. However, this has also led to an intense talent war among various startups.

"Bengaluru is like a super competitive market for tech hiring. With remote working, the location barrier has also now gone, so people can actually work in companies across different cities. So, you have to be prepared for it when you are building a tech team out of the city" said Tracxn cofounder Neha Singh.

Singh said they tackled this by having a good recruitment engine across different profiles in the company since some amount of attrition is bound to happen in a competitive city like Bengaluru. "Thankfully, most of our senior folks have been there with us for at least five or six years," she said.

Retaining employees

Mobikwik co-founder Upasana Taku believes performance during a company's worst times is an evident measure of what talent a company should retain.

"When you are on the highs, you attract a lot of good talent. When things are going down and you need to demonstrate stronger numbers and stronger revenues with lesser marketing incentives to earn, then it becomes evident who are the real performers. The committed folks double down on their performance and stuck through, and people who are probably superficial in their commitment move out themselves. So, being very performance-driven has helped us in retaining the right people and attracting better people while letting the lower performers leave respectfully" she said during the panel discussion.

Nazara founder Nitish Mittersain said that demonstrating positive intent and staying true to it is a soft asset that becomes very powerful over a long period of time. "There have been times when we didn't give appraisals for two or three years because the markets were tough. But when things picked up, we made sure that we kind of compensated or over-compensated for a time that was lost. And I found that this builds a reputation of credibility which helps even when newcomers come into the company" he said.

Taku also echoed this sentiment, saying that retaining good people comes from being honest and transparent with them "We did fairly delayed appraisals at least twice in the last two years and we've been upfront with our employees about it. Both times, we gave them ESOPs that were equal to or higher than the cash value of the appraisals. Few months down the line, they also got the cash appraisals" she said.

Providing a stable working environment has helped Nazara a lot in terms of retention over the last decade and half said Mittersain "After the early challenges, one of my commitments was to build and run the company in a very stable environment, where we would not fly too high and then fall again" he said.

IPO is a milestone

Sanghi said that an IPO is a milestone in the journey but it doesn't change how they serve their customer or how they think about the business "What's always kept me awake is how do we disrupt ourselves and get better at serving our customers. I don't think whether we are listed or not changes that aspect"

"I believe it takes 25 years to build a digital company in India. We are currently in year 10 or 11 of that journey. Hence, we just say we are moving from a private to a public company and will be that for the next 10-20 years" he said.