Senior executives, CXO hirings by start-ups rise 123% in FY22

During the last two years, the Covid-19 pandemic has triggered one of the worst jobs crisis in India, along with the rest of the world, forcing businesses to recalibrate their business strategies to optimise costs and efficiencies. Hiring by start-ups has recovered in full force post the pandemic as firms are desperately looking for senior executives and chief experience officer (CXO) to revamp their businesses, a new report suggests.

According to a RazorpayX payroll insights report, senior executives and CXO level jobs have seen a growth of 123% in the financial year 2021-22 (FY22), followed by junior level roles by 92%. The new hiring in mid and entry level jobs rose by 86% and 63%, respectively, says the report. The finding is based on the payroll data of a sample of over 25,000 employees from over 1,000 Indian organisations across 15 plus sectors using RazorpayX Payroll platform.

“In the case of new hires, senior-executives and CXO level roles (monthly CTC>150k) saw the highest increase in headcount of 123% in FY’22, followed by junior level roles (monthly CTC 20k-40k) where employee headcount increased by 92%. Mid-level and entry-level roles grew by 86% and 63% respectively,” the report highlights.

In FY22, overall employee headcount grew by 84% YoY, led by operations & logistics, sales & marketing, and tech sectors, says RazorpayX report. “Operations & logistics departments reported the highest increase in personnel of 172% in FY22, witnessing more than a 2.5X headcount growth from FY’21. This was closely followed by sales & marketing departments which grew by 148%. Technology teams saw an increase in headcount by 80%,” it adds.

“This trend indicates that while businesses have been on a revival phase, they are rebuilding their teams aggressively.”

The report noted that salary spends doubled over the year, in fact, grew by 102% over the year with a total of ₹1,489 crore processed. Meanwhile, mid and CXO level salaries grew by 8% and 6% respectively, in March 2022 as compared to April 2021, indicating that organisations were hiring and promoting.

Not only full-time employees, demand for independent workers including gig workers and freelancers also rose for some operations. Contractor payments increased by 132% and so did the number of contractors by almost 88% in FY’22, says the report.

Besides, reimbursements paid to employees increased by 209% with hotel-related reimbursements seeing the highest increase of 629%, followed by travel related reimbursements that grew 5x (416%), and fuel reimbursements (233%). However, internet reimbursements dropped by 37% in FY22, indicating that employees are returning to offices and work-related travel is back. Interestingly, Reimbursements for telephone bills increased by 157% over the year, which is a possible indication of hybrid work arrangements for day-to-day work.

Shashank Kumar, CTO and co-founder, Razorpay says, “This year’s Payroll insights clearly show that start-ups are flourishing in full force post the pandemic crisis. More and more businesses are realising that moving to automated platforms such as RazorpayX can enable them to focus more on growth and less on payroll compliance.”

The report says that businesses have been recalibrating their business strategies to optimise costs and efficiencies across the board. “Payroll compliance continues to be a critical expenditure, but businesses, especially startups are increasingly seeing the convenience of using automated payroll platforms to eliminate manual effort, error and security lapses on employee databases,” it adds.

The report claimed that businesses using automated payroll software such as RazorpayX Payroll platform saved start-ups around 151,680 man-hours over payroll and manual compliance processes in the last one year. The payroll platform witnessed a 3.7X adoption rate in FY22, allowing businesses to focus on their core functions, as opposed to worrying about compliance, it noted.