Indian startups are going through steep hiring cuts and the hiring of permanent employees has dipped by a significant 61 per cent in the last 12 months, a new report showed on Monday.

The hiring for chief experience officer (CXO) has decreased by a massive 93 per cent since October 2021, according to the annual insights report by RazorpayX Payroll, the business banking platform of Razorpay.

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The changing dynamics of the startup ecosystem have resulted in massive shifts in hiring patterns in the last 12 months.

Despite lower hiring, the total salary spent on existing full-time employees increased by 64.7 per cent.

However, these rising salaries are not distributed equitably across genders, especially in the top salary bracket, said the report.

“The Indian startup ecosystem has been facing headwinds in the past few months but they have been nothing short of resilient and adaptive to such a dynamic environment. The data indicates that startups have been optimising their workforce by building leaner yet stronger teams, keeping in mind the macro-forces,” said Shashank Mehta, Vice President and Head of RazorpayX.

With many startups facing the chills of funding winter, most of them are cutting back on their hiring.

“While hiring across departments has decreased, hiring in technology seems to have been least impacted. Technology-related jobs have managed to marginally increase their contribution to the overall workforce by 4 per cent while the hiring trend is slowing down in general,” the findings showed.

While hiring permanent employees has seen a fall, gig workers seem to be the preferred way to go for startups.

Payments to gig workers have seen a growth of 153 per cent since Oct 2021. The total number of enterprises that have shifted to a semi-gig workforce model has increased by 15 per cent.

Semi-skilled gig workers who are paid less than Rs 20,000 have the highest contribution to the entire pool of gig workers being hired by startups, followed by those who earn anywhere between Rs 20,000-Rs 40,000, said the report.

“However, these workers are one of the slowest growing cohorts growing at 26 per cent and 52 per cent, respectively. However, skilled gig workers who earn between Rs 85,000 to more than Rs 150,000, although contributing the least to the overall pool, have seen the highest growth in the last one year,” mentioned the report.

The report analysed data from Oct 2021 to September 2022 of more than 25,000 employees across over 1,000 Indian startups from 20 sectors.