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Bengaluru: The tide may finally be turning in the youth-obsessed Startup Inc. As their focus shifts from ‘growth at all cost’ to building a sustainable and profitable business, startups – long associated with young founders and younger workforces – are increasingly hiring older, more experienced hands for their top decks.
Many startups, particularly those gearing up for public listing, now consider youth and experience a winning combination.
Having experienced leaders instills confidence in investors and markets, who view it as an indicator of stability and potential for success, said company founders and industry watchers.
While startups continue to prefer youngsters for tech and product roles, over the last 1-1.5 years, there is a growing preference to hire experienced individuals for finance, regulatory and compliance functions, said hiring experts.
“There is an increased demand for senior professionals who have navigated longer business cycles and can introduce discipline and a structured approach,” said Anuj Roy, managing partner of executive search firm Fidius Advisory. “This is more evident in CXO hiring for roles such as finance, compliance, legal, and marketing.”
As startups continue to mature, the role of experienced senior professionals will become even more critical, he added.
Recent examples of startups hiring professionals in their late forties and fifties for leadership roles include Mathew George, group chief financial officer at fish and seafood supply chain company Captain Fresh, Mukund Barsagade, group CFO at fintech startup Lendingkart, Arvind Sampath, CFO at finance company Eduvanz, and Rajat Luthra, CEO of specialty coffee chain Third Wave Coffee.
Startups are looking for a level of emotional maturity which comes with age and experience, said Anshuman Das, CEO of executive search firm Longhouse Consulting.
Except for tech and product roles, “very few startups are now insisting on young CXOs at the time of hiring”, said Das. “That wasn’t the case earlier.”
Padmaja Ruparel, cofounder of Indian Angel Network, said that while venture capital (VC) funds that invest in early-stage companies bet on the founders and their ability to lead, they also understand the gaps in the leadership.
“Most young founders building tech innovation have never run businesses, or for that matter, even P&Ls (profit and loss statements). While they build excellent tech solutions to solve problems and can build tech for scale, they need help on the nitty-gritty of business-building,” she said. “Smart founders realise this early and onboard experienced talent to help build strong foundations of the business, mentor the team and even guide founders. In times of crisis, they leverage their experience to help steer the situation.”
Business Benefits
Eduvanz cofounder Varun Chopra said experienced executives are essential for regulatory and compliance functions. “Senior hires, while often more costly, bring invaluable skills in identifying and implementing the company’s strategic vision,” he said. “For example, our burn rate has been reduced by nearly half, thanks to the strategic initiatives led by our CXOs.”
Operational efficiencies, industry knowledge and crisis management are other areas where experienced executives excel, Chopra said.
Utham Gowda, CEO of Captain Fresh, said the firm is at a stage where it’s ready to explore a broader shareholder base, including public markets, which opens up their operations to greater scrutiny from analysts, shareholders, and the wider market. “As we move into this new phase of increased exposure, our focus remains on bringing more seasoned professionals like George, who has experience in leading public companies like HCL for over a decade, to ensure we excel in key areas such as compliance and financial strategy from the outset,” he said.
Das of Longhouse Consulting said that even startups elevating internal hires to top roles are increasingly choosing more experienced professionals, citing the cases of Nalin Negi, CEO of BharatPe, and Kamaldeep Singh, CEO of DealShare. “The same companies in the startup ecosystem are now behaving very differently from the way they would earlier,” he said.
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