Indian FinTechs on hiring spree even as economy is slowly opening up

By Priyanka Pani

The hiring scene in the Indian FinTech space looks optimistic as over two dozen players are planning to double their headcount over the next few months. The increased optimism amongst the players comes in at a time when Covid19 triggered pandemic, considered to be the worst in many centuries, has crippled the economies globally.

Well-funded companies and startups across various sub segments of FinTech starting from online lending startups to wealth management firms to crypto currency players are on a hiring spree on the back of inflow of private equity funds due to heightened activity in the segment. According to experts, digital payments, branch-less banking, and online financial transactions became more mainstream as physical distancing became the new normal due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Since the COVID-19 virus outbreak, we have witnessed the impact on the global economy in three major ways i.e. impact on the production and demand, disruption in the supply chain and market, and finally the financial impact on firms and financial markets. As an industry we have to work towards mastering the art of digital friction reduction via an amalgamation of engineering and design that further helps us in supporting the customers better in a frictionless manner,” said Ram Iyer, Founder of Vayana Network, a leading trade finance company.

He further added that while the world is going digital, experience and human relationships are key for small scale enterprises, especially during these times of crisis.

Vayana Network, which currently has a team of 60 people across the US, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam and Indonesia, is looking to scale up hiring aggressively even as it plans fo expand operations to Japan, South Korea and Taiwan this year.

IBS Intelligence spoke with over two dozen FinTech startups across the sub-segments and has compiled the hiring plans of these companies. Let’s have a look at some of these:

Xpay.Life, a digital utility payments platform based out of Bangalore, is looking to hire around 100 professional across roles such as content writers, business development executives, digital marketing specialists and others with around five years of experience. The company is offering salaries ranging from INR 600,000 to INR 10,00,000.

Rohit Kumar, Founder & CEO, Xpay.Life, said that the company had witnessed over 234% growth in the Recurring Utility Bill Payments on its application. Most of the growth is coming from a surge in rural consumers for paying bills online, he added.

Simpl, a digital payments startup that allows merchants to make easy checkouts, is looking to hire at least 70 more in the coming months.

Nityanand Sharma, Founder & CEO, Simpl said, “Due to the Covid-19, over the past few months, the market has been tremendously in favour of people opting for digital platforms. A few of our merchants have also brought changes in their working models to continue working in the present market. On our side, we tend to introduce more merchants by the end of another quarter and expand our horizon to recharge, making e-bill payments, etc. This increase and change in the scenario and going forward this becoming the new normal, we are looking to hire close to 50-70 people in the coming quarters.”

He further added that the focus is on building and expanding the tech-team. The company is also looking to hire Head of Partnerships and Alliances with 15-16 years of experience along with the Director of Data Science.

According to Archit Gupta, Founder of ClearTax, an online tax filing and audit firm, said, “We are preparing to hire 25% more people in our 150 people-strong engineering and design division immediately, as the business has been pacing up during the COVID days. And since our tax-filing product is cloud-based, our priority would be for the right candidate with engineering and design skillsets, irrespective of the city they are working from. Interviews will have to be over video-conferencing. Offer rollouts and employee onboarding will have to be remotely managed and laptops couriered.”

Swastik Nigam, Founder & CEO, Winvesta said, “We have continued hiring throughout the pandemic, across functions. We quickly adapted to the new world and ever since April, have been adding members to our team – in a distribution of permanent employees and freelance members. We are a young firm, and growing rapidly.”

The company is beefing up its technology, compliance , and operations team across India, Middle East Europe and the UK.

Experts feel that post COVID-19, FinTech is expected to grow exponentially as there would be a need for delivering financial services from offline to digital.

Agnostic to the particular vertical in financial services,  FinTech is likely to continue beating the drum and capturing a greater mindshare and trust of the end clients.

However, they also feel that while a few segments such as Travel Card business might remain affected due to Covid, a few segments such as digital-KYC  (inVOID, Signzy etc) may result in rapid growth. Similarly, new investment sectors (such as global investing), may be more attractive, than before.

Signzy, a digital KYC service provider, looks to add 70 new employees to its technology team.

Ankit Ratan, co-founder of Signzy says, “The ongoing pandemic has driven an extraordinary pace of digital transformation for the banking and financial services sector.  In the last four months, the demand for digitalised workflow solutions, including video-KYC, has gone near universal among the BFSI players. Naturally, we have to scale up our team strength in order to meet this demand.”

Signzy offers an AI powered RPA platform for financial services and has added 35 new employees since March to meet the growing demand for its solutions. The company is actively seeking candidates for roles like Backend Engineer, Full Stack Engineer, Product Manager, Frontend Developer, SDET 2, Product Marketing Manager, Engineering Manager and many more.

Another wealth management tech platform stock Vested Finance is hiring aggressively across product, content, engineering, customer success and business development.

Different parts of the fintech sector have been impacted differently by COVID. Lending has been the hardest hit whereas brokerage businesses have actually flourished. Overall as a sector there are still plenty of opportunities available for innovation. Interesting businesses are emerging in the SME fintech space, wealthtech and insurance tech. Additionally, the macro economic development in India is still on track for supporting a vibrant fintech ecosystem.

Another home-grown discount broking firm FYERS is aiming at doubling its employee strength to 200 in the coming months as it has witnessed a 30% percent surge in trading activity and expects more retail investors to enter trading as an alternate mode of wealth creation in testing times.

As a self-funded tech focused online brokerage firm, FYERS is driving up employment by hiring across the board for new talent, amid the pandemic. In this contactless era, lockdowns imposed to curb the spread, led to skyrocketing unemployment levels and unprecedented layoffs, due to severe pressures on businesses.