After lay-offs, start-ups in Pune no more a big draw for job seekers

Several other start-ups had also reportedly carried out large scale retrenchment of its employees. Now, both educational institutions and young professionals are increasingly getting wary of joining a start-up. Recently, IIT Mumbai had debarred the start-ups from recruiting on the first days of its campus recruitment rounds. Pune, on an average, produces more than 30,000 fresh engineering graduates every year.

As per the Startup report produced by Nasscom, Pune has over six per cent of the total functional start-ups. The report says that the start-ups in Pune had seen funding worth $ 80-90 million over the last year or so. E-commerce and hyperlocal e-commerce start-ups dot the city’s start-up space. Mostly the start-ups employ between 6-20 persons as a rule.

Talent acquisition for start-ups, senior HR professionals point out requires a separate set of skills than the established companies. Start-ups mostly work with a lean team, with more emphasis being put on multi tasking and innovation. Aliasager Motiwalla, co-founder and head of sales and partnership of Pune based start-up Plobal Tech Pvt limited, while admitting to difficulties in acquiring talent, said people are watchful at the moment. “We mostly recruit through agencies and referral systems,” he said.

Over the last few months, the company has managed to grow using the above two methods only. When it comes to recruitment, FirstCry, another Pune based start-up had to go to other cities to get the right talent. Manjula Rao, HR Head of the company said that as Pune lacked expertise in many domains, the company had to seek for the right talent in other cities.

“Yes, people are a bit fearful about joining start-ups now and it comes across during the interviews. However, if the company maintains honesty and transparency in its dealings with the employees, it can do so in mitigating the crisis,” she said. The company, on an average, pays between Rs 5-9 lakh per annum as starting package.

For the students community, the recent start-up downturn has not hampered much of their enthusiasm though wariness has crept in their attitude. AS Kulkarni, training and placement officer (TPO) of VIT said that 15-20 start- ups come for recruitment to the institute.

While VIT has not made any segregation regarding placement at start-ups, Kulkarni said that they have made the students aware of the various issues facing the start-up scenario in the country.

“Engineering graduates are mostly in the age bracket of 20 years, so they should be aware of the risks they take,” Kulkarni said, adding that many students joined start-ups as they want to get entrepreneurship experience before they start their own venture.