A qualitative study on the change in structure, competency, hiring and rewarding policy of an organization as they grow from a startup to a multibillion dollar company

Abstract

In 2021, India became the third largest startup hub in the world, just behind China and the U.S. The number of startups that were setup in 2021-22 were around 14,000 according to a survey by the Government. In 2021 alone, India witnessed over 82 Unicorns and 63 companies in total across Industries going public to raise over 1.4 Lakh crores. Many of these startups were started from the college dorm rooms with 3-4 people working part-time with an initial bootstrap fund of up to 10 lakhs. As time passed and these startups grew, they went on to raise billions of dollars in funding, based on their requirements. The growth also indicated a change in team dynamics, compensation structure, hiring policies, need of various competencies for managers to handle multi-disciplinary or complex roles and responsibilities. These practices contribute to the overall functioning of the company and decide the success rate of the company and its competitive advantage they have over other companies. The kind of practices also decide the kind of competency in the employees while hiring and selection. Through this study, we aim to analyze how some successful startups manage to handle their internal dynamics and cater to the changing need of roles and responsibilities which helped them become successful while others were not able to adopt the best practices and hence not successful. We will gauge the initial employees’ and employers’ perspectives on how the changing requirements were catered to as the company grew.