upGrad filling up senior leadership roles amid COVID-19, plans to double employee base
Mumbai: While most companies have gone on a hiring freeze or rationalizing their human resources, growing sectors like edtech are on a hiring spree. upGrad, India’s largest online higher education company in its most recent development onboarded Rohit Dhar as the new President – Products, this July. Rohit, who had co-founded Brainybatch Internet, India’s first lending platform focused on making education affordable by providing short-term, has over 13 years of experience in managing products for leading companies like OLX, Flipkart, e-Bay, PayPal, and StubHub. He will be leading the entire Product, Data Science, Analytics, and Design teams at upGrad.
Prior to him, the company onboarded Puneet Tanwar as President – Technology who will be leading the Technology vertical at upGrad. Puneet has accumulated over 20 years of experience in software development and joins upGrad from 1E, a UK-based software product company where he was Head of Engineering, India. Prior to this, he has held leadership positions in Engineering in firms such as Diebold Nixdorf, Microsoft and Electronic Arts.
In June upGrad also appointed Deepak H. Singhka, who started his career at Mahindra & Mahindra and went on to work at BYJU’S. There, he was responsible for initiating the ‘Field Sales’ across multiple cities in India, along with ‘Inside Sales’ in the Bengaluru office. His notable contribution includes helping the edtech set up their e-commerce channel with Amazon and Flipkart. As the Vice President – Business, Deepak will help steer the entire business towards growth and manage as well as improve upon success rate for working professionals, the college, and the academy business.
Talking about the recent hiring’s, Mayank Kumar, Co-Founder & MD, upGrad said “COVID-19 is an opportune time for the edtech sector and our strategy is to make the most of the opportunity and double-up our workforce. Leadership hiring plays an integral role in this, it is the right time to invest in senior talent which will help us to get ready for the new normal of workplace and learner dynamics. With our newly assembled team, we look forward to creating an impactful talent pool within the organisation that will help us drive new businesses and provide learners with the best edtech products.”
On April 1st, upGrad had onboarded their CEO – India, Arjun Mohan, who was erstwhile serving as the Chief Business Officer (CBO) at BYJU’S. The company is geared towards doubling up its workforce to 2000 by the end of this fiscal. The hiring will happen across all spectrum between fresher’s as well as lateral hiring. On the employee front, upGrad has announced salary reversal on the first day of this quarter owing to the positive business growth in past months and have declared work from home until the end of this year, in order to end the growing apprehensions amidst its workforce.