A job fair organised by the Tech Entrepreneurs Association of Mumbai (TEAM) and staffing firm NLB services during the recently concluded Mumbai Tech Week could result in the hiring of 200 professionals with niche artificial intelligence (AI) skills, the organisers said.
Around 90% of the job offers are for lateral movements, that is, professionals already in the formal workforce with three to seven years of experience, NLB said. The rest are freshers who will complete their degrees in the coming months.
“We had nearly 2,500 applications, which we then whittled down to 1,000 using AI tools to match profiles to work experience, and overall eligibility. In fact, we used AI extensively throughout the process of preparing for the job fair as well,” Varun Sachdeva, senior vice president and APAC head at NLB Services said.
The two-day job fair saw close to 900 shortlisted candidates turning up for subsequent interview rounds, including walk-ins for more than 20 digital firms. Since most of the candidates had experience in the job roles in question, the average starting salary range was Rs 15 lakhs per annum.
Talent acquisition teams from more than 15 digital firms like Dream11, Shaadi.com, National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), IDfy and Quantiphi were present at the venue to recruit AI professionals. Others like Pepperfry held virtual interviews during the job fair.
“Mumbai’s leadership in AI adoption presents a significant opportunity to attract and develop tech talent. To capitalise on this, TEAM convened a job fair alongside MTW 2025, Asia’s premier AI event, to attract quality talent that can contribute to building Mumbai’s tech ecosystem,” stated Vivek Khemani, member of the governing council, TEAM.
Jobs for which interviews were conducted included niche technology domains like artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), blockchain, data science and full stack development.
“We currently have a requirement for 100 professionals skilled in AI. These are profiles where we need people to join immediately,” said the talent acquisition head of one of the participating recruiters at the job fair on the condition of anonymity. The executive said that the company could look to hire as many as 10 professionals from the event.
A recent report from McKinsey said that the Mumbai startup ecosystem currently accounts for more than 10,000 direct engineering jobs, and with the AI boom, this number could touch 50, 000 by 2035. The report projects that the total tech talent pool a decade from now would be two million professionals strong, with more than 500,000 professionals trained in AI.