Author: adastra

Bangalore, June 30, 2018: Ad Astra, one of the largest full-suite recruitment service providers in India, has received global recognition for getting its case study published in ‘The American Express Global SME Pulse 2018’, conducted by Oxford Economics.

The report titled ‘SME Pulse 2018 – Strategies for Sustainable Growth’ is a global study to explore how SMEs are unlocking growth and playing to their unique strengths in 2018. Ad Astra is the only Indian HR firm that has been considered for participating in the study.

Oxford Economics, headquartered at Oxford, is a leader in global forecasting and quantitative analysis and does a global study on SMEs for Amex every year. This year, more than 3000 SMEs from 12 countries and 16 industries have been interviewed for the global study. The report covers SMEs that are growing fast to understand more about shifting customer demands and invest in better and faster information systems to improve decision making.

Key points from Ad Astra case study

Retaining talent is the key success mantra for growth. Ad Astra has excelled in this through long-term retention of talent and, therefore, clients.

Rapid sales growth from $1 million dollar in 2015 to around $5 million dollar today.

The company helps SMEs develop professional anagement strategies and shape their incoming generation of leaders.

It empowers staff in decision making and offers equity for long-serving and high-performing employees.

It recognizes the need to innovate and introduce new technologies to continue the process smoothly.

The case study quotes Ms Nirupama V G, Managing Director of Ad Astra. She says external financing is essential to accelerate growth by making the big investments in marketing, branding, and setting up of new offices. “It is now time to take the plunge, to take external funding and scale the organisation,” she says.

Talking about this achievement, Ms. Nirupama says, “We are very happy that Oxford Economics, a world leader in global forecasting and economics, has recognized us and given us the opportunity to share our case study. Getting ourselves featured in this report is a big feather in our cap. The entire credit goes to my team that has worked hard to make this possible. It is extremely prestigious to be featured in the Oxford report which is based on research and data from renowned professionals.”

Corporate Comm India(CCI NewsWire)

BANGALORE: Memories of the big financial crisis that raved South-East Asian Countries in late 1900s and early 20000 are still fresh. The speed with which they recovered is largely due to pro-active government policies. India prides itself for staying out of trouble due to conservative financial and banking policies. But India is lagging behind these economies in far sighted labour policies and implementation. My HR consulting takes me to several capitals of South east Countries where I find India has lot to learn and unlearn.

Genuine Government support, Flexibility to adopt changes and innovate wherer required and common features I get to hear from people I meet. Most of these countries work with the global workforce in close proximity. This has given their workforce a wide range of skills and experiences which ensure that they value add quickly to the emerging sectors, understand regional and international markets. So the complementary workforce of locals and foreigners is one of the key winning attributes.

South East Asia is a mix of developing and less developed economies, small and large countries and people of distinct nationalities. The Organisations and the workforce here are more agile: more sharply focused on customers, and are better able to mobilize during trying times.

A common Feature among most of these countries is that they believe in execution and adhere to discipline. There is little or no bureaucracy, a lot of transparency which make it easier to bolster speed and quality.

Constant communication at all levels-government to employers of their policies, values, process excellence, importance of productivity and vision ensures that the workforce don’t treat these as an afterthought but adhere to norms. Here, a rule is a rule and non-adherence is not tolerated. Employers ensure that there is a robust connection between policies and business performance and communicate constantly to ensure everyone falls in line.

Features of South East Asian work force Market.

Highly capable work force that can adapt to constant internal and global upheavals.

Far sighted leadership that can constantly innovate and manage change.

Consumer insight driven.

Experience in handling increasing business complexity during economic turbulence.

A truly engaged workforce that can build and encourage conducive platforms for collaboration between ethnic groups within South East Asia and the global talent.

Passionate workforce who take pride in what they do irrespective of the level

Clearly, there is no overnight fix to identify what India can learn from these countries. The development and sustenance of some of these learning can never be achieved in a short term but it is a journey to learn and imbibe the good things from their culture. What works very well in one region cannot work well for another region. But this does not mean that we cannot borrow the best from these cultures and build our capabilities and business performance.

“says Nirupama V.G., MD, Ad Astra Consultants, a leading international HR consulting Firm, on a few things India can learn from its South East Asian Neighbors.

Unlike many countries in the world, India has fought off the scourge of the global economic crisis that has resulted in large-scale unemployment. The rate of decline in employment is minor. But there lies a vast gray area in a country where countless young people are still struggling to be gainfully employed.

India is saddled with this problem even as its scorching economy has started spewing out thousands of new opportunities, and a growing number of young people are willing to grab anything on the table.

According to experts, unemployment is almost like an unexploded bomb, and despite many eff orts, the country still has some way to go. A recent research by Business Standard, a publication group, reveals that while India’s business sector has added close to $300 billion of fixed assets over the past decade, labor costs have remained flat at about 6.5 percent during the same period. “Since wages and salaries have increased across the board, it implies that recruitment in manufacturing fi rms is either fl at or may even have declined slightly,” the study says.

Similarly, a survey by the country’s labor ministry for the period October- December 2009 said although the overall scenario improved by about 628,000 jobs during December 2009 over September 2009, in the estimated total labor force of over 520 million in 2009-2010, as many as 9.4 percent remained unemployed nationwide, and it was 10.1 percent in villages where 60 percent of the country’s people live.

“Such numbers, however, provide a partial picture, as they cover only selected industries and relate mainly to formal employment,” says a recent International Labour Organisation report.

“About 86 percent of India’s workers are in informal employment and over 90 percent are in what is known as the unorganised sector. These shares have changed little in recent years, indicating that India’s strong and steady growth has not yet yielded a signifi cant improvement in terms of broadening access to quality employment.” A bleak example of the crisis is a recent incident in a small northern Indian town where more than 100,000 people gathered to apply for 416 jobs offering a mere Rs 5,200 ($115) a month.

The oddity is not so much for its massive turnout for so few vacancies in “lowly positions” such as dhobi or washermen, barbers and water carriers, but for the violence that erupted subsequently when applicants grew frustrated.

“While India has seen resumption of rapid economic growth post crisis, employing youth (aged between 19 and 35 years) is still a big problem,” says Rohit Krishnan, an industry expert at London Business School. “Its eff ects are visible at every segment of society – from the economics of labor market to social unrest, to political dissatisfaction and crime.”

“I think when we are looking at the growth scenarios being outlined for India, we are talking about 8 to 9 percent growth over the next 10 years. And then when we look at the demographic projections, we see that we are going to have a very young labor force,” says International Labor Organisation’s Director and Country Offi cer, India, Tine Staermose. According to her, the average age of an Indian by 2020 is estimated to be 29 years compared with 37 years in China and the United States, 45 years in Western Europe, and 48 years in Japan. “Undoubtedly that is a huge challenge, which brings the urgency to ensure that this labor force is properly skilled to be able to fi nd jobs, and to be provided with decent employment,” she says.

“India’s unemployment problems stem primarily from the unprecedented phase of demographic changes,” says India’s Ministry of Labour and Employment Secretary Prabhat C. Chaturvedi. These changes, he adds, contribute to an ever-increasing size of labor force. According to projections, the proportion of population in the working-age group (15-59 years) is likely to increase from approximately 58 percent in 2001 to more than 64 percent by 2021.

Youth unemployment in urban areas arises from the shift of a large number of rural youth, in search of jobs, to urban areas, and (also the fact that they) don’t find it because of lack of skills that the industry seeks, and lack of the industry’s ability to utilize the skills they have,” says Rohit Krishnan.

According to Mukesh Gupta, a specialist at ILO’s South Asia offi ce, “The overcrowded agricultural sector is also a big contributor to employment woes.” With the shift from agriculture to other vocations being very low, a large number of people are either unemployed or underemployed. Chaturvedi says India has initiated a number of programs for skill development over the past few years. “Our target is to have 500 million trained youth by 2022. Most notable schemes for creating wage employment are the National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme (NREGP) in rural areas and Swarna Jayanti Shahari Rozgar Yojana (SJSRY) in urban areas,” he adds. NREGP, which was launched in 2005, aims to provide every household with at least 100 days of guaranteed wage employment in a year. “This is India’s most far-reaching eff ort to guarantee wage employment. It provided gainful employment to 45 million people in rural India last year,” says Gupta. SJSRY on the other hand seeks to provide jobs to the unemployed and underemployed poor in cities. It also helps them set up self-employment ventures. This scheme, says Chaturvedi, was revamped last year with an idea to encourage the private sector to invest in skill development eff orts. ILO adds that the government and private sector’s pursuit to improve skills development and training could result in the number of people covered under skill development programs rising from 3.1 million to more than 10 million a year in the next few years. This may provide light at the end of the tunnel for many, even though the tunnel may appear long. “The good part is that India will continue to grow between 7 and 9 percent for the next two decades. With all the eff orts that both the government and the private sector is taking, India is going to look totally diff erent from what it has been in the last 200 years,” says Nirupama VG, a human resource and recruitment consultant, and the founder and managing director of Ad Astra Consultants. “India has hardly experienced any structural growth in the past. But all that is changing. While the private sector has been very dynamic [in the past decade], the government too is catching up. And together that can make a big difference,” she adds

Bangalore: Not just campus recruitment, the ‘C’ level (read leadership) hiring too is back again, after a recession induced 20-month slumber.

With this, third party hirers have a huge mandate to hunt suitable CXO candidates to fill thousands of vacant and newly created positions across industry verticals.

Nirupama V G, MD of recruitment firm Ad Astra.

With this, third party hirers have a huge mandate to hunt suitable CXO candidates to fill thousands of vacant and newly created positions across industry verticals.

“With market recovery, there is a visible uptick in the CXO hiring. The trend is seen across south America, Asia Pacific and India and across verticals,” says Ray Pereira, director, Kenexa India.

Industries like healthcare, infrastructure and real estate have seen huge venture capital and private equity play in the recent past. This has resulted in the creation of several newer business streams and foot print expansions. Every realty firm has an arm for low cost houses or independent divisions for retail space, office space, highend condominiums and villas, and each one run by an independent head/CEO. Healthcare firms like Appolo, Wockhardt and Columbia Asia are expanding by leaps and bounds. Domestic hospitals are increasingly run by CEOs who understand branding, market positioning and sales operations today.

Also, sensing huge business possibilities in the country’s civil infrastructure space, almost 100 international infrastructure consulting firms of multiple disciplines have directly or indirectly set up shops here in the last couple of years. Sectors like manufacturing, aerospace (design, production, engineering, consulting, support services, component making and MRO) are hiring large number of leadership talent. Real estate firms are filling top jobs in the property management, leasing space. BFSI, IT and BPO sectors too are seeing large number of top level hiring with a focus on sales, marketing, delivery, operations. IT/ITeS sector alone is expected to hire over 2,000 CXOs during this fiscal while an equal number is expected in the infrastructure (power, manufacturing, cement, oil, logistics, telecom, road/rail). The booming healthcare vertical is expected to onboard around 500 CXO candidates this year.

Sunil Goel, director, GlobalHunt India, an executive search firm says, there is significant traction in the ‘C’ level hiring in the last few months as companies have concrete business plans and are on an expansion mode. “Also, in the last few years CXOs never got an opportunity for job change. So, the current spurt in CXO hiring is driven by attrition, replacement and a sizable fresh demand. Also, a substantial volume of leadership is required for the rural market push.”

According to Nirupama V G, managing director of another hiring firm, AdAstra, “Not just big ticket hiring, very attractive compensation packages are also back in the market.” For instance CFO (chief financial officer) salaries are up from Rs 80 lakh per annum levels to Rs 1 crore, HR heads get upto Rs 1.5 crore, CEO (telecom/retail, real estate) salaries are up from Rs 2.5 crore to Rs 3 crore and more. In most cases salaries are garnished with stock options and perks. Even small and medium firms are offering Rs 50 lakh plus handsome variable pay for CEO candidates, from the earlier Rs 30 lakh.

With the industry lifting its two-year freeze on salary hikes and bonus payouts, Indian IT employees are on a high. But this time round, their consumption pattern tells a different story. While the younger techies are again the high spenders, the seniors are enlarging their savings pool.

The country has close to two million IT and ITeS employees, earning an average salary of Rs 6 lakh. With an average 10-12 per cent hike by IT firms, this amounts to about an additional Rs 5,000 a month for an employee. In the case of at least one big IT firm, Infosys, the pay out from the company to employees was as high as Rs 600 crore.
Many high-tech job posting are said to be currently vacant in companies across France, Spain, Germany, Norway, Finland, Sweden, the Czech Republic and Switzerland. Companies will start hiring for these positions once recovery firmly sets in. “But their talent pipeline is dry as they don’t produce much talent. So one important option will be to import talent in technology, financial services, investment banking, consulting, product engineering and R&D. Like music, technology jobs can transcend language bariers (which are high in continental Europe),” said B S Murthy, CEO of recruitment firm HumanCapital.

Consumption pattern Says Mr Bhuwan Gaurav, Head of Marketing, Tanishq. “We do expect a spike from the IT segment – especially around the Akshaya Tritiya time which is considered an auspicious time to buy jewellery and also the largest selling period for jewellers.”

Nirupama V G, MD, Ad Astra, says that the younger employees would spend more on pubbing or entertainment, while the older ones would save more or spend on real estate because they don’t want to be caught napping the next time the slowdown happens.

In fact, when the Sunil Mantri Group launched the Mantri Premero project on Sarjapur Road in Bangalore in January, the company said it was mainly targeting the IT employees because of the proximity of the project to the IT and outsourcing hub.

The company Chairman, Mr Sunil Mantri pointed out at the launch event that the company had even started marketing the project among IT employees before its formal launch. The response he said was very good.

“We expect IT salaries to go up 10-20 per cent in the next few months,” he said, confident that IT salary hikes would as a result improve demand for housing.

But for the seniors, the mantra is to save more. “Most tech employees have almost doubled their monthly investments in SIPs and insurance policies,” says an adviser with RS Consultants, a wealth management consultant, “People, who were investing Rs 1 lakh an annum in endowment policies are now upping it to Rs 2-3 lakh,” she says pointing out that this phenomenon is seen more among the senior level employees whose salaries are upwards of Rs 20 lakh an annum.
Retail spending

The 4-8 year-olds in the industry would spend some amount on clothes and jewellery as they forfeited these indulgences last year.

“They would have more money in June and July when the bonus payouts would happen and some of them would buy white goods or go on a vacation,” says Mr Rishi Das, Chief Executive Officer, CareerNet Consulting, a Bangalore-based recruitment firm.

Arvind Brands and Retail saw a 61 per cent growth in April this year from last year same time. Mr J. Suresh, CEO, Arvind Brand and Retail, says, “The mood was bad earlier, now things are much different. This is one of the highest growth spurts we have seen in recent times. Ticket sizes in April grew 10-20 per cent across our various brands (Arrow, Gant etc) and retail formats.”

It’s difficult to segment how much of this growth came from IT crowd in particular. But considering that Arvind has a huge retail presence in Bangalore and the city being driven by the IT crowd, a significant part of the growth could have come from Bangalore, he points out.

India’s quality pool of diverse talent seems to be attracting global enterprises to the country.

Ashok Reddy, MD of staffing firm TeamLease, said no other market offered the kind of diverse and quality talent that india does. “Our talent pool comes with a proven record of working in challenging and complex environments. They are capable of replicating this success wherever they are posted,” he said.

An official of a headhunting company said it is already involved in sourcing talent for jobs overseas, while some others said they have been receiving queries from global companies directly or via third party.

“Look at the philippines, it is facing a severe shortage of senior executives in its BPO industry. We have already sourced many for the country. Australia is another market where there is dearth of talent across industry domains. Also, telecom is the new vertical for most of Africa, and the countries there want to hire from India,” said Nirupama V G, MD of recruitment firm Ad Astra

Many high-tech job posting are said to be currently vacant in companies across France, Spain, Germany, Norway, Finland, Sweden, the Czech Republic and Switzerland. Companies will start hiring for these positions once recovery firmly sets in. “But their talent pipeline is dry as they don’t produce much talent. So one important option will be to import talent in technology, financial services, investment banking, consulting, product engineering and R&D. Like music, technology jobs can transcend language bariers (which are high in continental Europe),” said B S Murthy, CEO of recruitment firm HumanCapital