IT recruitment: There has been some softening on IT recruitment: Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Info Edge

“What we’ve seen over the past few quarters is that there’s been some deceleration in IT hiring. And this is largely being led by global trends driven by what’s happening in the US market, but the non-IT space is doing well,” said Sanjeev Bikhchandani, co-founder of Info Edge.

Are most IT companies downsizing?
Well, the question arises, are there any alternatives to downsizing? Second, as a founder, you have to lead by example and cut your own salary before you ask others to tighten their belts. And when you do, the consolations can be such that you give people a soft landing.
The government is really building a startup ecosystem, and they say it’s a startup ecosystem, a digital ecosystem that’s really going to drive growth.
What we’ve seen over the past few quarters is that there’s been some slowdown in IT recruitment. And this is mostly led by global trends, what’s happening in the US market, but non-IT is doing fine. So if you look at our last week of jobs, it was 2% growth year over year, but that was down 15% in IT and up 25% in non-IT. So really non-IT, which is actually more broadly positioned for the economy, is doing pretty well and I think that bodes well for the economy.

So your opinion on valuations has been criticized for being inflated valuations, especially in terms of how they were viewed after the IPOs of some of these startups that came out?
It has a lot to do with liquidity, and I think what happened is that after 2008, for the next 13 or 14 years, every time there was a problem, the Fed squeezed itself out of trouble, which led to inflation of the Asset prices and hype led liquidity to find its way everywhere, including into early stage companies in India. Now that the Fed is tightening its balance sheet and US interest rates are rising, valuations around the world will be impacted across all asset classes, and that is what is happening.