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The past decade was especially kind to Bengaluru. Driven by the city’s focus on IT-related industries, Bengaluru was named the most dynamic city in the world, according to JLL’s 2017 City Momentum Index.
With that said, India as a whole did meet some choppy waters in 2019. For example, India’s annual economic growth slowed to 4.5% in the July-September quarter in 2019. While this is nothing to scoff at, 4.5% is the country’s weakest pace since 2013. Consumer demand, private investment and exports all struggled in the year also, with year-on-year growth figure well below the 4.7% forecast.
Despite the headwinds, hiring activities in India seem relatively unmoved by the larger economic climate. According to the Economic Times, there was a 10% year-on-year increase in hiring activities in December 2019 compared to the same period the year before. Leading the overall uptick were the usual suspects like business process outsourcing (27%) and pharma (18%), as well as the tech industry. Demand for job roles in Information Technology — Software, for example, contributed 18% to the hiring boost. In fact, the same report stated that fresh hiring in the software sector grew by 26%, making it one of the fastest growing industries in India.
With technology playing such a critical part in India’s stratospheric growth, it is worthwhile, then, to examine the latest hiring trends in Bengaluru, India’s technology and innovation capital. Here are a few insights that we have gathered:
One of the first casualty of slowing economic growth is workforce expansion. With technology-enabled disruption continuing to play its part, companies, both local and international ones, have become more discerning in terms of hiring. In fact, according to Rituparna Chakraborty, President of the Indian Staffing Federation, 2020 is expected to stay flat in terms of employment or, at best, have a marginal growth. “With the GDP and key economic indicators yet to pick up steam, it remains to be seen if consumption and/or investments will go up and, if they do, then we have hope for employment growth.” So far, reports show that across industries, the percentage of organisations indicating a desire to increase their headcount has gone down. With that said, roles for ‘the right people’ continue to exist.
Namita Bharadwaj, the Principal-India Products Leader and Career Consulting Leader (North, East & Bangladesh) at Mercer, echoed Chakraborty sentiments. “The forecast for 2020 from a hiring perspective will further see a drop with a lower percentage of organisations indicating the need to expand workforce across industries,” he said. As such, companies will turn inwards and “continue to focus on internal talent — review what’s there, what’s required by the organisation and build and upskill the talent as per the organisation’s needs”.
Despite lower demands for headcount expansion and an emphasis on internal hires, there are still opportunities to be had on the recruitment front. What is seen as a trend is the continued increase in demand for senior-level professionals, not only among unicorns but from a lot of early-stage start-ups, as well as companies already with A, B, C and D series funding. That’s because upon receiving fresh funding companies start to look at accelerating growth, and that’s also when they start to look at people who have varied experience.
In Bengaluru, a lot of professionals from early unicorns are already moving on to start companies of their own. As such, talent that are crucial to starting new companies, like Chief Financial Officer and Human Resource Heads, are going to remain hot. Companies are also moving on to hire people at the senior level across functions like supply chain, product engineering, as well as customer experience — otherwise known as roles that help them accelerate growth momentum.
If you have a niche skill up your sleeve, there is a good chance that the general employment climate is not going to impact you nearly as much. Artificial intelligence, digital marketing, design thinking, Internet of Things, robotic process automation and natural language processing and generation continue to be regarded by employers as some of the most crucial skills to hire in India, especially in tech-heavy cities like Bengaluru.
“The slowdown will no doubt result in layoffs and reduction in the number of new hires in certain sectors,” said Swati Thakur, Associate — Advisory Services of India’s Society for Human Resource Management. “However, due to extensive digitisation, job opportunities for those with skills in emerging technologies will continue to grow.” She added that demand for people with expertise in data science, iOS and Android platforms, design engineering, will continue to be robust and not be affected much. Traditional organisations are aggressively looking for ways to digitise. As such, many of them are now looking to invest in talent within the digital space to fill the gaps.
All the upcoming hiring activities is part of the reason why, in November 2019, Michael Page India added a third office in downtown Bengaluru after Gurgaon and Mumbai. While we were busy setting up shops in Gurgaon and Mumbai, we witnessed the astronomical growth of Bengaluru’s technology industry, as well as the flourishing of the local start-up ecosystem. As I wrote in a recent blog article, we wanted to be a part of that action early on.
Bengaluru’s thriving tech, biotech and pharma ecosystem was not the only reason why Michael Page earmarked the bustling city. South Indian cities like Chennai and Hyderabad, too, have active automobile, manufacturing and IT hubs of their own. Basing operations out of Bengaluru, then, allows the team to serve its clients in the region better.
Looking ahead, I subscribe to a generally positive outlook, especially for Bengaluru. I believe that India can emulate what we have seen in China and in some of the other emerging markets. We will definitely see increased momentum of growth in technology, digital analytics products, as well as other functions that are growth drivers for the economy.
The numbers are in Bengaluru’s favour, too. In India, we currently have 24 unicorns. We expect it to grow to over a hundred unicorns in the next four to five years’ time, and everybody expects the majority of them to be based in Bengaluru.
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