India: e-commerce platform IndiaMart to pay staff on a weekly basis

B2B e-commerce firm IndiaMart announced on Sunday 6 February that it will now pay its employees on a weekly basis rather than a monthly one. “With an aim to build a flexible work culture and ensure the financial wellness of our employees, IndiaMart becomes the first Indian organisation to adopt a weekly payout of salaries,” Dinesh Agarwal, the company’s founder and CEO, wrote in a Twitter post. The company, which was founded in 1996 and has 2,724 permanent and 836 temporary employees, says it made the move to address the needs of its staff. Dinesh Gulati, COO of IndiaMart, is quoted by the the Times of India as saying: “This is especially relevant in light of the current pandemic where millennial workers, who in many instances live on their own away from home, struggle financially with their once-a-month pay-checks.” The company already opted several years ago to pay out employee bonuses on a weekly rather than monthly basis. This decision is part of a trend in Indian start-ups that are trying different ways of attracting young talent. In 2021, 2,250 start-ups were created in the country. In total, Indian start-ups created 660,000 direct jobs in 2021 and 3.41 million indirect jobs, according to a report published by NASSCOM, the premier trade body and chamber of commerce of the tech industry in India.