Carrot and stick approach? Flipkart Internet is keeping its employees happy, hands over Rs 1 cr as annual salaries

One of the major factors that are attracting talent is fat packages and they are, indeed, getting spoiled by the new-age firms.

Flipkart Internet, which is the consumer-facing arm of Flipkart, handed over Rs 1 crore as annual salaries to at least 23 of its employees last year.

As per its filing with the Registrar of Companies, Flipkart Internet's employee benefit expenses grew threefold to Rs 476 crore.

As per reports, Flipkart Internet’s Mekin Maheshwari received Rs 18.73 crore during 2014-15.

Flipkart Internet’s fat packages point out that there is a need to retain pool of talent for which it is necessary to pay them well.

"They are getting in people from the Valley or people who have worked with organisations such as Google, Adobe, Intuit. For companies like Google, the practice of paying high salaries starts at the engineering college level where they are among the biggest paymasters," Anuj Roy, partner, digital practice, at executive search firm Transearch, told ET.

However, despite fat packages, Flipkart Internet still lags behind when compared with other giants like Hindustan Unilever, Infosys, Wipro, etc where more than 50 employees draw 8-digit salaries.

Meanwhile, if employees are hired on a larger pay scale, they also face enormous pressure to justify salaries and meet targets.

"Ecommerce requires different types of skills, a different mindset, willingness to take risks and often, crossfunctional expertise. It's hard to find people who are the right fit. Then there's the fact that people who do fit the requirements have the options to go to many other places which are equally keen to get the same kind of talent on board. The kind of salaries you pay depend largely on who you are competing with," Sandeep Murthy, partner at venture capital firm Lightbox Ventures, told ET.