Firms look for older CXOs as covid-led startup wave ebbs

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Mint showed. The study - Market Moves Insights 2020-2023 , showed that 85% of the top hires in 2023 were made by established companies, and 15% by companies backed by private equity (PE) and venture capital (VC). In the previous year, the figure for the startup sector stood at 29%.

“Increasing global and economic complexity has resulted in the continued demand for tenured leaders who can navigate uncertainty. Blowups in parts of the startup ecosystem have also accentuated this trend," said Sonal Agrawal, managing partner of Accord India, which headhunts senior executives. In 2021, information technology and startup companies desperate to fill CXO roles lured senior leaders from the manufacturing, banking and consumer sectors with hefty compensation and stock options, bringing down the average CEO age.

In the years since, startups have laid off more than 30,000 employees and barely hired for senior levels, as PE and VC capital thinned to a trickle. “We were not obsessed with promoting young talent the way startups do, and at the same time, there is little point in taking someone in who has little runway (years until retirement) left. Hiring leadership depends on the sector and some such as engineering, procurement and construction will require heads who are 50-plus years of age," said S.

Venkatesh, group president of human resources (HR) at RPG Group. It was the fintech and startup sectors that pushed for younger leaders, the HR head of one of India’s top three insurers said on the condition of anonymity. “The investors realized the mistakes that startups made over the last couple of years, and may now want more experienced leaders." Energy and mining group Vedanta offers incubation projects where employees interested in