India’s Startup Mafia 2.0: Oyo, Ola, And Udaan Are Leading The Wave Of New Businesses, And More Women Are Leaving Tech Jobs

What does “startup mafia” mean? The word “mafia” is used to describe startup executives who go on to start their own businesses. It comes from the term “PayPal Mafia,” which was used to describe former workers of the payments platform who went on to start their own businesses.

Some of the top leaders at big tech companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter also left to start their own businesses. They started Instagram, Pinterest, Quora, Medium, and Square, all of which are popular websites. Entrepreneurs who come from very successful firms have worked hard to build business lines, so they have domain expertise and special skill sets. Investors are interested in all of this.

The founders of Udaan, Vaibhav Gupta, Sujeet Kumar, and Amod Malviya, who were all top executives at Flipkart, were part of the first generation of the startup gang. Albinder Dhindsa left Zomato to start Blinkit, which used to be called Grofers. After that, the food-tech company bought the business.

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) company Freshworks, which has become a major springboard for entrepreneurs, was started by leaders who used to work for Zoho.

Mohit Kumar and Vatsal Singhal of Ultrahuman, Ragini Das and Anand Sinha of Leap Club, Amit Lakhotia of Park+, Nitin Gupta and Prateek Jindal of Uni Cards, Anish Achuthan and Mabel Chacko of Open Financial Technologies, and Arvind Parthiban of Superops.ai are among the founders of the new generation of the mafia.

Putting them ahead: The mafioso said that working for large organisations before going out on their own helped them learn how to deal with big, complicated problems and gave them the skills they needed to start their own businesses.

In addition to the experience, the culture of the groups they used to work for and their ability to make mistakes also helped them on their way to becoming entrepreneurs.

More women are leaving tech jobs.

As the effects of COVID-19 wear off and businesses insist that workers go back to work, the number of women leaving India’s technology industry has doubled compared to that of men, according to data from recruiters and exit interview firms.

In terms of numbers, the rate of female employees leaving their jobs has been as high as 30–40% in recent months. This is much higher than the average rate of around 15% in the tech sector, according to data from Incruiter, a company that does exit interviews.

Most women who leave their jobs are between the ages of 30 and 40, when they are in the middle of their careers and have a lot of responsibilities at home and with children.

Options for women: Many women are still looking for jobs that they can do on their own time. The data shows that most are moving to jobs closer to home or even taking on gig or freelance jobs that give them more freedom.

Over time, a hiring company called TeamLease Digital found that only 8% of women in the tech field left their jobs in 2021, which was a lot less than the average of 20%. By the end of 2022, about 16% of women had quit their jobs, which is more than the average of 15% for the industry. This shows that the turnover rate for women has topped that of men. This has gotten bigger.

How do the best players do it? The top three IT companies, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Infosys, and Wipro, say that the number of women working for them hasn’t changed much. But the TCS annual report, which came out last week, said that more women left the company in FY22–23.