Recruitment platforms report a clear shift, with talent steadily moving from large-cap IT firms to start-ups

A hiring slowdown across India’s IT services sector is pushing professionals affected by downsizing to explore opportunities in the country’s fast-growing start-up ecosystem, where roles often come with broader mandates and higher upside.

Recruitment platforms report a clear shift, with talent steadily moving from large-cap IT firms to start-ups.

Over the past year, more than 25 senior executives — formerly general managers and vice-presidents at companies such as Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, Wipro and HCL Technologies — have taken up leadership roles such as chief technology officer, chief executive officer and chief product officer at start-ups, according to one hiring platform that requested anonymity.

A similar trend is visible among engineering managers and directors, particularly among professionals aged 28-40 with five to 12 years of experience.

Talent reallocation

Largely, the transitions are concentrated among a few source firms and a limited set of high-attraction start-up destinations, Aditya Narayan Mishra — MD and CEO of CIEL HR told businessline. This indicates early-stage talent reallocation driven by niche capability demand.

Instahyre also noticed a clear shift in the market where start-ups prioritise specialised, high-impact technical skills over legacy expertise. Particularly, there is a surge in demand for AI/ML, full-stack development and cloud engineering.

“Many recruitment teams at start-ups [especially in fintech] are seeking data scientists and cybersecurity experts to bolster their digital-first solutions. Our findings suggest that hiring is increasingly centred on product-centric roles,” said Sarbojit Mallick, Co-founder, Instahyre.

Overall, tech start-ups are estimated to add 80,000 net new tech jobs in 2026 even as tech giants revise their hiring plans. To put this in perspective, TCS reduced its headcount by around 25,800 associates by the third quarter of FY26.

Hiring activity

Meanwhile, start-ups increased their hiring activity by 23 per cent compared to last year. Larger companies reported a 24 per cent annual drop in active openings as of late 2025. This means that while mid-level employees face an uncertain future in larger corporates, start-ups are serving as the safety net in the tech ecosystem.

Despite serving as the saving grace, Instahyre (which has also onboarded ex-large cap employees) said the transition is not easy since employees have to adjust to the cultural difference in work environments.

When asked about the hiring slump impact, Harsh Jain, Founder of DreamSports and Co- chair of Tech Entrepreneurs Association of Mumbai (TEAM) Governing Council said the situation puts further pressure on tech start-ups to compete against larger players to acquire top talent.

Following global developments, companies like like Google, Meta, OpenAI are also moving to India to acquire niche talent with four-six years experience. So despite a larger talent pool, there is greater competition with a future concern of lesser mid-level talent as fewer freshrers are hired.

“Indian tech start-ups have to figure out how to compete. Maybe, we give more equity and make sure the top talent stays and grows in Indian start-ups. The only way to do that is to build amazing AI applications. It’s a challenge but we have to solve it,” he said.

Published on April 17, 2026