India eCommerce industry on a ‘aqui’hiring spree

Indian eCommerce industry, which is at its best these days, is ‘aquihiring’ these days and is looking for not just skilled people but innovative ideas as well.

As per an Economic Times report, Indian startup firm Flipkart, about a month ago, was in talks with Denmark-based social networking site, which matches travelers going to a destination with those who want to send goods to that place.

Not just this, but the firm is also prepping up to aquihire Sociotransit. If sources are to be believed, Flipkart has made a proposal to Niral Desai, an IITian, and Pranav Shah, who has an MBA from India. The offer was to buy-out their firm, Sociotransit, and that the founder members could continue to work on the expansion of their startup while drawing a salary from Flipkart as employees.

While aquihiring of Sociotransit is on hold, experts believe that the trend of getting talent and technology might continue. Flipkart, however, did not respond to any query related to Sociaotransit, but, it did mention that the firm’s prime focus this year would be aquihiring.

In fact, the trend of acquihiring — acquiring a company for its cutting-edge technology and hiring its employees for their expertise — is catching up fast in India's hypercompetitive ecommerce sector.

In India, there’s a huge chunk of tech experts owning their ideas and are not willing to give it up for the lure of a job with other bigger eCommerce firms. The aim is to spot the teams working on any ‘out of the box’ idea with new-age technology and then get them onboard by acquiring their company.

Snapdeal's latest acquihires include mobility solutions firm Letsgomo and Bengaluru-based Grabbon. Its recent product Shopo, an app-only zero-commission marketplace, is engineered by the MartMobi team acquired earlier this year.

Rivals Flipkart and Snapdeal are betting on the idea of aquihiring while Jabong is in no hurry to get into the race anytime soon.

A Flipkart spokesperson said, "We embrace the fact that not all innovation can happen internally, and want to join hands with disruptive companies for technology and talent."

Abhishek Kumar, vice-president, corporate development, at Snapdeal says, "Now that we are a very large company in terms of number and people, (acquiring) smaller groups of companies doing cutting-edge work and bringing their team on board give impetus to the project and adds entrepreneurship zeal. Acquihires have given us good result and will be our focus in future."

"It is a win-win for both the company and the candidate they are hiring along with his startup, which is mostly at an early stage," said GC Jayaprakash, executive director at RGF Executive Search. Online fashion retailer Jabong said it is open to the idea. "If the startup is going to give our organisation organic growth, add value, at the same time if the person too can add value and has a great idea at a nascent stage, we are open to taking them on board and taking over the startup," said Ashu Malhotra, head of HR at Jabong.
Image: indiatimes