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In India’s startup ecosystem, unicorns—startups valued at over $1 billion—frequently serve as substantial employers. Despite a global funding winter prompting numerous organisations to implement cost-cutting measures and employee layoffs, Delhi unicorns have managed to buck the hiring trend, as per a research report.

During the period from September 2022 to July 2023, a research analysis by PrivateCircle Research revealed that Delhi unicorns, including those from the NCR region, experienced a net growth of 52,420 employees in their workforce. In contrast, Bengaluru unicorns witnessed a net reduction of 41,208 employees during the same timeframe.

Among the major recruiters in Delhi, unicorns such as Paytm, PhysicsWallah, PolicyBazaar, Delhivery, and BharatPe stood out. The analysis by the private market intelligence platform focuses only on employees for whom provident fund (PF) contributions were made.

Unicorns in cities such as Chennai and Pune increased their workforce by 3,967 and 1,049 employees, respectively, while Mumbai (including Thane) and Hyderabad witnessed a reduction of 1,252 and 368 employees, respectively, during the mentioned period.

Employment fluctuations

In September 2022, unicorns onboarded around 32,000 employees, but at the same time, 35,000 employees left. Notably, in December 2022, a peak of 44,295 employees departed from unicorns—the highest exit count in the reviewed period—just a month after the recruitment of approximately 42,000 employees.

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Month-on-Month trend of unicorn employees’ exits and hiring | Source: PrivateCircle Research | Image credit: PrivateCircle Research and Datawrapper

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In 2023, there appears to be an upward trend in hiring at unicorn startups since April, with the numbers steadily increasing and reaching 43,361 new employees in July, with significant workforce growth observed among unicorns such as Pb Fintech, BigBasket, and Rebel Foods, during July.

Across 111 unicorns, the average attrition rate for the specified period was 4.72%, with exceptions such as Zerodha, Zoho, and Hike maintaining attrition rates below 1%, and a subset including Amagi, Postman, Freshworks, Acko, Cred, Games24x7, Druva, Icertis, and Dream11, registering attrition rates below 2%.

As of July 2023, the combined workforce of 111 Indian unicorns was 442,714 employees, a net increase of 12,765 individuals or 3% from the 429,949 employees recorded in September 2022.

The analysis omits Polygon, Hasura, and 5irechain due to the absence of employee count entries in the Employment Provident Fund Organisation data, and excludes Rivigo because it was acquired by Mahindra in September 2022 at a valuation lower than $1 billion.