Job creation bounces back post-COVID-19

Good Morning,

COVID-19 induced lockdowns disrupted many functions across sectors, leading many companies to resort to pay cuts or even downsizing teams. However, more than a year on, the organised sector seems to have recovered from its bout of unemployment.

As per the payroll data from Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO), the statutory body operating under the Ministry of Labour and Employment, Government of India, the country is now seeing a growing trend of a strong post-COVID-19 recovery in the jobs market. 

In April-June 2021, the country saw over 1.28 million net payroll additions — the highest in the last 27 months after over 1.21 million additions in September last year.

The latest quarter’s comparison to the same period of 2019 highlights an absolute increase of 111.5 percent, compared to 1.43 million new employees’ addition during April-June 2019. The maximum of the new employees — at 1.44 million — were added in the 18-25 years age group during April-June 2021, up 44.2 percent compared to nearly a million added during April-June 2019.

This trend is reflective of the hiring frenzy in India's startup ecosystem. 

As of August 2021, there were over 70,000 active openings for the top six skills: full-stack engineers, data analysts, front-end developers, SRE/DevOps, data scientists, and backend engineers. Collectively, these contribute 30 percent to job openings in the IT sector.

The Interview

Brands of India is YourStory's initiative to bring all the players in the D2C space on one platform to connect founders with investors and help their startups grow.

In the latest episode of #BrandsOfIndia, Kanwaljit Singh, Managing Partner at Fireside Ventures, gives his views on the D2C sector and how founders can build iconic brands from India.

Find out more about the YourStory’s Brands of India event here. 

Editor’s Pick: Product Roadmap

In 2017, Chinmoy Rajwanshi and Shashank Shwet realised that finding the right talent and people with employable skills was not an easy task. 

It led them to start ImaginXP, a platform that enables future skill degrees and for-credit subjects in partnerships with universities in a B2B model. Read more.

Startup Spotlight

Using AI to enhance security and surveillance systems

Amid growing crime rates, accidents, and attacks, CCTVs have become an important source for ensuring safety and security.

In 2011, entrepreneur Abhijit Shanbhag realised that the wealth of image and video content that was being generated was not being analysed or translated into actionable data. So, he launched Graymatics to enhance the security and surveillance systems by integrating with existing CCTV infrastructure. Read more.

News & Updates

• Zomato co-founder Gaurav Gupta has quit the foodtech startup after six years. The former Head of Supply of the Gurugram-based company, in an email to the employees, wrote that he was "taking a new turn in his life" and will be starting a new chapter.
• Tonetag has completed the first cohort under the RBI sandbox for retail payments. The startup has successfully executed offline voice-based payments via feature phones and smartphones in areas with inconsistent internet connectivity.
• Pharmeasy is looking to hire over 200 engineers for its upcoming development centres in Hyderabad, Pune, and the NCR region. It is building a larger ecosystem to solve outpatient healthcare challenges and bridging the gap in the healthcare industry, it said in a statement.
• Paytm plans to deploy FASTag-based parking services across the country after Paytm Payments Bank Ltd (PPBL) enabled the country's first FASTag-based metro parking facility in partnership with the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation.
• According to a report by Grant Thornton Bharat, deal activity witnessed growth in August at $8.4 billion, on the back of a healthy jump both in volumes and sizes. There were 219 deals during the month, which was the highest since 2005, and double that of the year-ago period.

Before you go, stay inspired with… 

“Today, an engineer sitting in Patna can find a job anywhere in the country or world. Every company is trying to reach him, he has multiple offers, and his price will naturally go up.”

— Shailaz Nag, Co-founder and CEO, DotPe

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