While Paytm saw its employee headcount expand by a whopping 3.5 times during the fiscal, PB Fintech, which runs the Policybazaar platform, saw a 32% year-on-year increase in employees. Mumbai-based FSN Ecommerce, which runs the Nykaa platform, saw a 15% year-on-year increase in its headcount, while CarTrade Tech’s workforce increased 44%.
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Gurgaon-based Zomato and Delhivery were the only outliers in the list to have reduced their headcount during the fiscal on a net basis by 2-3% year-on-year.
“Startups and new age tech companies were on the lookout for good tech talent during the last financial year – both listed and private companies. In tech hiring, there was a challenge despite there being layoffs by large tech firms like Google, Amazon and Meta,” an executive with a listed new age staffing firm told ET on condition of anonymity. “This doesn’t mean the companies that saw employee numbers reducing haven’t been hiring. It’s just that they would have rationalised some of their business verticals as part of broader cost-cutting measures.”
Financial services firm Paytm saw its staff headcount increase to 25,959 employees at March-end from 7,278 a year ago. The Noida-based company told ET that it has moved its field employees from off-rolls to on-rolls, resulting in the massive surge in headcount. It also highlighted that it has been doubling down on its devices segment by increasing its on-field sales force.
Also read | Paytm parent One 97’s Q2 loss narrows to Rs 291.7 crore
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“Over the last year, the number of Paytm-pioneered devices deployed have nearly doubled from 44 lakh to 92 lakh, strengthening our in-store payments leadership. This has been driven by increasing our on-field sales force, who are widening our reach and thus, we have invested in merchant acquiring sales teams,” Paytm said. “The increase in total employee count seems so because we have moved our field sales executives, who are an important part of our device distribution channel, from off-roll to on-roll, giving them better benefits.”Paytm saw its employee costs increase 55.4% year-on-year to Rs 3,778.3 crore in 2022-23 as it strengthened its sales channel to “drive penetration” of its high margin use cases such as merchant subscriptions and lending, according to the company. “We are also investing in our product and technology team to help scale our platform to support the next leg of users and transactions,” said its annual report.
Similarly, omnichannel beauty and fashion retailer Nykaa added technology roles and front-end retail and sales headcount that led to an increase in employees. As of March 31, it had 3,177 people, compared to 2,764 employees a year ago.
Also read | Nykaa Q1 Results: Net profit rises 8% YoY to Rs 5.4 crore; revenue jumps 24%
“At Nykaa, we take pride in attracting and embracing top-notch talent, as it is an integral part of our business and talent strategy. A key aspect is strengthening mid and senior leadership across the organisation, enabling us to manage high growth, diversification and future readiness,” the company told ET. “Between FY22 and FY23, we have augmented our talent pool in technology and front-end retail and sales to support our growth. We continue to build the vitality of our talent pool with diverse expertise from top-tier organisations and leading business schools.”
During the company’s earnings call for 2022-23, Nykaa’s executive chairperson Falguni Nayar had underscored that the increase in its retail and sales employees was on account of the company launching its retail stores, private label brands and other brands in general trade and modern trade stores.
“So, this category of employees now accounts for 32.3% of our total employees… there was a large amount of investment in employee growth last year, but most of it was specially in the category of stores and sales employee count, and we saw that after two years of Covid there was an opportunity to expand offline distribution and that’s why this big focus was made,” Nayar had said during the call in May.
PB Fintech saw its headcount rise to 15,467 as of March 31 this year, from 11,755 a year ago, while CarTrade Tech saw employees increase to 945 from 656.
Also read | PB Fintech posts Q1 operating profit, net loss narrows to Rs 11.9 crore
PB Fintech and CarTrade Tech did not respond to queries sent by ET.
In terms of employee costs, PB Fintech’s expenses on staff increased 22.6% year-on-year to Rs 1,539.6 crore, whereas CarTrade Tech’s staff costs fell 38% to Rs 205.3 crore.
While the number of employees on Zomato’s payroll reduced marginally to 3,440 in 2022-23 from 3,517 in the previous fiscal, Delhivery’s headcount declined to 92,294 people from 94,733 in 2021-22, as the company reported only a marginal growth in its scale with its profit barely seeing an improvement.
In November 2022, food and grocery delivery platform Zomato laid off 3% of its workforce citing a regular performance-based churn. Consequently, its employee benefit expenses in 2022-23 fell about 10% year-on-year to Rs 1,465 crore.
New age logistics player Delhivery saw its headcount reduce by about 2,400 people during 2022-23. Its staff costs increased 6.6% year-on-year to Rs 1,400 crore.
Zomato and Delhivery declined to comment.
