-Prabhat Bhardwaj

India is the third-largest startup ecosystem in the world. After nearly a decade of being dominated especially by e-commerce and ride-hailing businesses, business-to-business (B2B) startups are making a breakthrough. According to the NASSCOM-Zinnov report, over 1,000 new tech startups took birth in 2017, bringing the total number of tech startups to 5,200—and 40% of the startups founded were in the B2B sector, with a focus on verticals like fintech, healthcare, e-commerce and aggregators, while the overall tech startup funding was reported to be over 30%. Also, 20% of the startups were reported to emerge from tier-2 and tier-3 cities. This growth, in conjunction with better investment opportunities and government’s push to manufacturing industry, is expected to shift the employment landscape towards the B2B sector.

The rise of technology startups is changing the structure of job market. While e-commerce majors such as Amazon, Paytm and Flipkart continue to recruit from top B-schools, new startups such as UpGrad hire talent with a strong domain knowledge. Even so, B2B startups are visiting campuses, and hires from there account for 20-30% of recruitment.

Youngsters, on their part, need to consider things such as stability, learning experience, benefits or perks, before making a career choice. The possibility of building a wide network and expertise at B2B startups is usually high, as one is generally trained in many areas and multiple facets of a single job—and working through successes and failures can open doors of opportunities wider.

In addition, there are certain, more practical reasons that make a B2B startup job promising.

Higher visibility in a company: A small team means lesser possibility of you sharing your skill-set with others, and that leads to more responsibility and visibility in a company. That also means an early chance to work on ‘live’ projects, compared to an MNC employee. Such a job culture can make you professionally mature in the nascent years of career.

Flexibility: B2B startups often give you the opportunity to explore tasks outside the specific job role, routine and business timelines, and contribute to the success of the larger business. One can discover hidden talents, interests and develop new skills or upgrade existing skills. Startups also often allow a flexible work schedule.

Invaluable learning experience: It has been seen that India’s B2B tech startup space is infused with the latest advancements in artificial intelligence, digital payments and other technologies, which can help you leverage the learning curve experience. Constant innovations from marketing, automation, CRM to wireframing allow new graduates to learn directly from the founders. The exposure to multiple stakeholders and the diversity of business streams can open a way for an innovative approach to problem-solving and experimenting with ideas and solutions.

Work culture: While it depends from company to company and even on the immediate and/or top supervisors and colleagues, we have seen that the company culture in B2B startups does offer perks such as flexible working hours, engaging environment, more freedom, recreational areas, etc. Even though a job at a startup isn’t plain sailing, working with a group of like-minded individuals can result in some amount of job satisfaction.

Recognition: As startups are essentially small companies, every kind of work tends to make a direct impact on the business, especially if the project is handled from inception to completion. The ability to see how your work translated to real results can be lost at a large company. Interestingly, mistakes can also be eliminated at a much faster rate, as these are easier to notice.

In the near future, it is expected that B2B tech startups will continue to innovate newer business models and have a long-lasting impact in solving social challenges, while improving the Indian startup ecosystem. The B2B startup ecosystem has also seen a rise in the role of corporates, with nearly 50 major corporates now offering programmes across collaboration, investments and acceleration. Working at a startup often means that youngsters can progress relatively quickly, with a fast rate of advancement. However, at the end of the day, job satisfaction ultimately depends on the person taking up the job.

-The author is vice-president, HR & Administration, Power2SME—the ‘buying club’ for SMEs. Views are personal