Edtech hirings at an all-time high — over 4,100 job openings in Unacademy, Vedantu, Simplilearn and more

• With students moving to remote learning setup, edtech companies like Gradeup, Vedantu, Simplilearn, upGrad, Unacademy, Masai School and others are hiring across roles including educators and product managers.
  
• According to a ManpowerGroup estimate, there are approximately 12,000 job vacancies for permanent roles across edtech companies in India, as of June.
  
• Another 90,000 job openings are for contractual roles in the edtech sector.
  
• Krishna Kumar, CEO and Founder of Simplilearn believes that the lockdown has been a ‘game-changer’ for the edtech sector as there has been a sudden surge in enrollments from students as well as working professionals.

As schools and universities move to online modules for learning continuity, edtech has emerged as one of the top sectors that have been hiring aggressively despite the lockdown. With students moving to remote learning setup, these edtech companies like Gradeup, Vedantu, Simplilearn, upGrad, Unacademy, Masai School and others are hiring across roles including educators and product managers.

Krishna Kumar, CEO and Founder of Simplilearn believes that the lockdown has been a ‘game-changer’ for the edtech sector as there has been a sudden surge in enrollments from students as well as working professionals.

Over 1 lakh job opening in edtech companies for permanent and gig roles

According to a ManpowerGroup estimate, there are approximately 12,000 job vacancies across edtech companies in India, as of June. And that constitutes only the permanent job roles. Another 90,000 job openings are for contractual roles in the edtech sector.

Simplilearn now has over 100 job openings for permanent roles and 500 vacancies for specialised or gig roles. “At Simplilearn, we witnessed a 30% jump in enrollments between March and April, 2020. While hiring was always part of the plan, the current phase has also triggered the need for more manpower to cater to this rising demand,” Kumar told Business Insider.

However, as far as appraisals are concerned, Kumar said that the company is in a ‘wait and watch’ mode. “But all bonuses and variables are paid as per plan,” he added.

Masai School is also planning to add nearly 20 people by the end of June. This includes Lead instructors, curriculum leads, technical mentors, marketing manager, admissions counselor and subject matter experts. “In addition to this, we have also rolled out appraisals to the existing team, for the year,” said Prateek Shukla, CEO & Co-founder of Masai School.

The demand for educators increase as the learner base grows

Whitehat Jr, on the other hand, is doubling the number of employees and teachers to meet the 100% month-on-month increase in student enrollments. The company plans to hire 1,500 teachers and 400 other staff almost every month, CEO Karan Bajaj said in an earlier interview.

Unacademy too, plans to onboard over 500 educators over the next one year while it is also focussing on recruiting across teams such as sales, operations, confirmed Tina Balachandran, VP, HR at Unacademy.

The edtech companies attribute the rise in jobs to the increased demand for online learning. “Due to the increased demand for online learning, we are definitely ramping up our backend and technology and have plans to hire 1500 employees across all levels and with domain expertise in the field of technology, product, finance, strategy & HR,” said Vamsi Krishna, CEO & Co-founder of Vedantu. The platform says that its revenue grew by over 80% with the students spending an average of 18-20 minutes per live class daily.

Gradeup also witnessed nearly 25% surge in daily enrollments, especially live classes for JEE & NEET aspirants.

“With Covid 19 and the lockdown due to increase in demand, our requirements in academic positions have specifically gone up. At the same time we are also scaling up on the sales team to cater to the demand of online classes which were provided by offline institutes in the past. For the next quarter, we will hire technology, product and sales professionals. We have been hiring 30-40 people for these categories since May,” Shobhit Bhatnagar, CEO and Founder of Gradeup told Business Insider.

Meanwhile, upGrad onboarded senior staff including CEO Arjun Mohan and VP Puneet Tanwar, amid the lockdown. “We have closed a couple more senior management positions too, on the product and business side and they will be joining us in the next 4-6 weeks. All our hiring procedures have been shifted to online with immediate effect, which includes video calling at the time of shortlisting the candidate, followed by another round of interview call with the HR and the respective team manager,” Mayank Kumar, Co-founder & MD, upGrad said.

The hiring and onboarding has also witnessed a shift. Companies are virtually onboarding employees via video conferencing tools — leveraging technology and digitisation.

See also:
Digital skills that experts believe you need to survive the current job crisis

Indian government may allow schools to open after August 15

IIT Bombay, Kharagpur, Roorkee and Kanpur students will not have to sit for final year exams