Diversity in Indian startups improves as companies raise more funds, reveals Trifecta Capital report

Diversity within teams in Indian startups improves as companies raise more funds, reveals a survey conducted by Trifecta Capital. The participation of women in the workforce increased 2-4 percent as companies moved from Series A to Series B or growth stage financing, showed a Trifecta Capital report titled Human Capital in the New Economy - Benchmarks and Best Practices 2019.

Aakash Goel, Partner, Trifecta Capital, told HerStory,

“As the companies grew from Series A to B and growth, the proportion of women becomes better, probably as they expand their functions to customer service and technology, and are therefore able to hire more women.”

The Trifecta Capital report, which was based on a survey of 45 companies across five sectors of the new economy, showed women participation across startups at Series A, Series B, and growth stages of funding stood at 22 percent.

In comparison, women participation in the funded ecosystem in the West stands at 26 percent. Though the gap is not huge, Aakash points out that in India, vertical ecommerce, consumer services, and hyperlocal startups -- where a large part of the workforce consists of the front-end delivery teams -- largely comprise men.

Of the 45 companies that participated in the survey, many are part of the Trifecta Capital portfolio.

The list includes Ninjacart, Knowlarity, Zoomcar, Furlenco, ixigo, Razorpay, MobiKwik, BigBasket, Box8, Faballey, and Paper Boat, among others. These 45 companies represent 49,161 employees across functions as diverse as technology, sales, operations, customer service, logistics, HR, finance, etc.

This study focuses on three key functions -- technology, sales, and operations -- predominant contributors to the talent pool of new economy businesses.

Typically, companies add talent to these functions at later stages of their journey. The report also states that “deep-rooted cultural reasons, as certain functions in India are more acceptable to hiring women than others viz. customer service, design, HR.”

Hiring talent and availability of talent pool

The report states that “paucity of talent is a perennial problem." Trifecta noted that it takes startups to recruit a senior talent about six months.

There is a competition among startups to hire since 80 percent of them prefer hiring from other startups on account of domain experience and familiarity with the culture. In the case of technology function, the crunch is more pronounced and it takes about two months to fill two out of three tech openings.

Add to this scenario a thin talent pool, and diversity goes for a toss. If there is no talent in the market then who do companies hire?

“If engineering colleges have a higher percentage of women students then that will be reflected in the industry too,” says Akash.

Conscious effort to build a diverse workforce

Can founders do more to build diverse teams? Akash believes founders shouldn't have a biased opinion about the capabilities of women.

“They are more efficient, goal-oriented, and can multi-task. Therefore, if founders aren’t consciously keeping soft targets for themselves to create diversity, then they are missing out on a very important source of talent. It is their loss. While companies are doing better on the diversity front, there is much more that needs to be done,” he adds.

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