This edtech startup is looking to hire 1,500 teachers and 400 other staff immediately⁠— CEO says the business is doubling every month

• In an interview with Business Insider, Karan Bajaj, CEO of Whitehat Jr said that the company is doubling the number of employees and teachers to meet the 100% month-on-month increase in student enrollments.
  
• For the non-teaching roles, the startup is looking to hire employees across domains like sales, curriculum creation, operations.
  
• The minimum compensation we are considering for entry-level employees is ₹500,000 per annum.

The coronavirus pandemic has ushered an era of online learning. As students move to remote learning setup, Indian edtech startup Whitehat Jr has ramped up hiring to meet the surge in enrollments.

In an interview with Business Insider, Karan Bajaj, CEO of Whitehat Jr said that the company is doubling the number of employees and teachers to meet the 100% month-on-month increase in student enrollments.

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“We have 400 employees and 1,500 teachers as of now and we are doubling on both fronts. If we look at last month (April), we added about 700 people — 500 teachers remotely and 200 employees — despite the lockdown and onboarded all of them virtually,” he said.

At a time when companies are downsizing their workforce, the startup, which offers AI courses to children aged between 6-14 years, is also looking to hire professionals from other startups.

The teachers will be hired on a contractual basis as they are freelancers and are supposed to work remotely. “Teachers are all on cloud, so we have set up a very strong tech to enable the teachers to facilitate learning. We were able to scale that very well,” he added.

They are onboarding women as teaching staff, who have a strong academic background in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths) in fields such as machine learning and space technology. Women account for 85% of the teaching staff at Whitehat Jr.

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For the non-teaching roles, the startup is looking to hire employees across domains like sales, curriculum creation, operations. “The company is growing at 100% month-on-month. With that kind of doubling up, the tech has to be built more scalably and operations teams have to take care of the growing number of classes. So we need strong resources in every department.”

Most of the new hires are expected to have 1-5 years of experience. However, Bajaj said that the startup is hiring across spectrum — team leaders, directors and other middle management roles. So, the experience may vary for them, according to the seniority level. “The minimum compensation we are considering for entry-level employees is ₹500,000 per annum,” he added.

Backed by Nexus Venture Partners and Omidyar Network India, the startup is now eyeing global expansion as the enrollments increase exponentially. The company claims that its US business is growing more than 200% every month.

“We have a strong 25-member internal recruitment team, and consultants who are giving us hundreds of profiles. People are also applying via social media platforms. So, all mechanisms are open right now,” Bajaj said.

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