Edtech start-ups switch to hiring mode

Several players such as Byju’s, upgrad, and Lido to almost double headcount by end of the year

Education technology start-ups are aggressively ramping up their headcount to cater to the new demands as the Covid-19 situation adds new tailwinds to the sector. Most players are expecting their headcount to double by the end of the year as they seek to fill positions across sales, technology, content creation, and product development.

These companies are doing a mix of lateral and fresher hiring with some giving weight to candidates whose joining dates have been deferred by recruiters after the pandemic.

“Since jobs have been rescinded and offer letters have been pulled out for many, we are able to access good talent. Overall, we feel that the talent pool available will be far better,” said Mayank Kumar, co-founder and managing director, upgrad. The online higher education company is looking at doubling its team to 2,000 by March, with an average salary package of ~10 lakh per annum. “We feel this is an interesting time for us to double down because we believe that all what we have been able to achieve in the last five years, we can achieve the same over the next five months,” said Kumar.

Lido Learning, an edtech firm founded by Sahil Sheth, a former vicepresident at Byju’s, also has similar hiring plans. The company is looking at adding 1,000 more to its existing workforce of 1,177 by the end of the year.

“In our sales and pre-sales roles, we are planning to get freshers, several of whose offers were revoked by other recruiters. We are running virtual drives for this,” said a company spokesperson. The Bace Capitalbacked online tutoring company, which runs live online classes with a student-teacher ratio of 6:1, is also in talks to raise a Series-b round of $20 million in a couple of months.

Vedantu, which has seen the number of paid users increase from 250,000 to 800,000 in the past three months, is planning to hire 1,500 employees across all levels and domains. “We are planning to hire senior talent with domain expertise in the field of technology, product, finance, strategy and human resource,” said the company, which has a headcount of 5,000. According to reports, Vedantu has also closed a fresh funding round of around $100 million recently.

With the ongoing crisis making online learning vital to learning, decacorn start-up Byju’s is also planning to double its employee base of 4,000.

“We plan to hire at least 4,000 more people in business, content, and product development roles over the next six months,” said Mrinal Mohit, chief operating officer, Byju’s.

Saif Partners-backed Toppr, which has pumped in $6 million for the launch of Toppr Codr to teach coding to K12 students, has over 100 positions open for Codr. “Toppr has 1,500 employees and 60,000 educators on its platform, and with the launch of Toppr Codr, we will be onboarding 100 plus experts as coding tutors, including those from Iit-bombay, Iit-madras, Iit-delhi, and Iit-kanpur. We are also looking forward to leadership hiring in growth and operations at vice-president level,” said Zishaan Hayath, chief executive and co-founder, Toppr.

Online exam preparation platform Gradeup has also almost doubled its headcount from 330 in March to 585 employees during the second quarter of calendar year 2020.