Technology startups hiring seasoned HR executives

BANGALORE: With talent being their most critical asset, technology startups that have acquired a certain scale and growing rapidly are beginning to hire experienced HR professionals to better organize their HR functions. Fast growing startups also need to continuously foster new talent and align them to their business goals.

Take Bangalore-based In-Mobi, the mobile advertising network, which according to one estimate is the world's second largest such network. Some months ago, the company's founder Naveen Tewari told TOI that 60% of his time was spent on getting and retaining high-quality talent.

Now the company has created the position of a vice president of global people operations. Monisha Tambay, who previously worked for Subex, Genpact , StorageTek and HewittAssociates, has been appointed to that role. Her mandate is to develop a strategic approach to talent management and establish HR processes across geographies.

Till recently, online bus ticketing company redBus had outsourced its HR function to a firm called The HR Practice. But the company is now scouting for an HR head to manage talent and drive a culture of innovation.

"We have 480 employees across 26 cities. We want to map talent and engage employees in a more systematic way. We are also setting up the redBus Academy, focusing on skill upgradation and employee engagement as part of our training sessions," says Phanindra Sama, CEO of redBus, a company that has sold 1 crore seats so far, making it perhaps the highest transaction volume for a B2C company.

Media technology company Komli Media recently hired Anjali Shrivastava, who has over 18 years of experience in HR, talent strategy, business planning, training and development, and who was the former country talent head at ad agency Ogilvy & Mather.

"We hired Anjali as the global head of HR to create a career path for our employees and provide the right level of opportunity to top performers," says Prashant Mehta, CEO of Komli Media. Komli Media has over 400 employees across 18 offices in India, Australia, New Zealand , South East Asia, Middle East, Hong Kong, North America and the UK. It plans to grow its headcount to 500 by this year-end .

Seasoned HR professionals also appear keen to work with startups. Startups give them the space to innovate. "Start-ups give them the opportunity to design off the rack processes relevant to the culture of the company. Many experienced HR professionals are willing to give their time to build size and value into the company," says Venkat Shastry , office managing director in executive search firm Korn/Ferry Bangalore.

Tambay of InMobi says she took up the job because it gave her a global exposure to start HR processes from scratch customized to different countries.

Some HR professionals are even willing to compromise on their compensation if the opportunity is really good. "They are willing to trade-off immediate fixed salary for a stock option that may be given to them down the line," says Gaurav Lahiri, MD of HR management consulting firm Hay Group India.

Aparna Ballakur, who left Yahoo India, where she was head of HR, to join e-commerce portalFlipkart in May this year, says she joined Flipkart because of the complexity of the business and the fact that the company was changing the way people shop in India.

"It provides me a unique opportunity; it combines the agility and growth of a start up with the complexity and size of a midsize company," says Flipkart's chief people officer who has 4,800 people to handle, and adds, "It tests all you have learnt about building for scale and teaches you to do so in a fast changing, high growth environment."

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