The war to attract and retain talent With New Age companies offering fatter pay packets, established organisations are forced to review their staff engagement and reward programmes

As New Age firms dole out fatter salaries to attract the most skilled employees, companies need to strengthen their work environment, increase their staff engagement and reward policies, to hold on to talent. A war of talent is raging between the New Age companies and established organisations. These startups are not only changing the placements scenario in top B-schools, they are also hiring from leading banks and consulting firms by offering fatter pay checks. “Well-funded organisations are offering better salaries and also getting good talent. This is happening in all the New Age industries including e-commerce,” Amit Sinha, VP – business planning and people, of mobile commerce firm Paytm. “The toughest challenge facing most new technology companies these days isn’t getting funded — it’s hiring the best, most skilled employees,” Anjli Jain, founder of mobile app platform Kryptos Mobile, said and added that aggressive venture capital funded IT/ITES startups like Ola and Flipkart were offering fatter salaries, stock options and unique perks to lure and retain the best talent in India. This trend which is happening in the e-commerce and tech startup sector, is not limited to this space only and had also happened in aviation, telecom, insurance, retail and social sector as well a few years ago. “There is definitely an increase in the average salary offered to the employees. As per my understanding, there has been around 30 to 40 per cent increase in average salary. And the biggest reason for this is the aggressive goals of the funded startups combined with the availability of funds,” Aristotle Consultancy co-founder Deepak Dhamija said.