Even as the year just gone by has not been normal in terms of overall growth, Bikano, India’s leading packaged snacks brand, has turned out to be an outlier. Bikano has continued its hiring spree in these difficult times, even as most companies took to mass layoffs. In fact, with expanded operations and an increased footprint, particularly in Hyderabad and the Northeast region, the company’s overall headcount rose by as much as 10% in 2022.

As the New Year begins on a positive note, the company intends to add to its workforce. The upcoming hiring process would constitute lateral hiring as well as recruiting freshers. A combination of hiring would feature in the coming years with an eye on addressing the seasonal surge in production and demand.

So far, adding more SKUs for a larger range of products in the company’s ever-expanding portfolio has been the go-to strategy. Intending to improve its market share, ramp up production at several plants in Delhi/NCR, and the south Indian market, especially Hyderabad, has become a top priority. This ramping up is set to catalyze large-scale hiring across plants and facilities. Furthermore, in addition to the hiring of experienced manpower, many trainees across functional areas, including sales and manufacturing, are expected to be onboarded for the Hyderabad plant.

However, the hiring process doesn’t stop here. The newly hired employees are duly taken through an induction and training process, including a six-month orientation program, part of which is conducted on a very effective and successful platform called Apni pathshala. Post-training, a substantial number of hires are deployed on-site as a part of the field sales force backed by support and senior managerial staff present at corporate offices.

“We are indeed happy to have come out relatively unscathed through the pandemic years. Unlike other mainstream businesses, which were cutting down on their manpower, we were doing the exact opposite. It is this level of increased hiring which has been fueling our aggressive expansion plans. In the New Year, as the inflationary trends as well as the broader slowdown headwinds ease further, we will expand our product portfolio with new and innovative offerings as well as SKUs. This means that we will only step up our hiring and recruitment drive further looking to increase our total workforce by as much as 10-15% in the coming two or three years,” said Manish Aggarwal, director, Bikano.

“Existing team is retained based on their performance. At the same time, we are hiring a fresh and talented workforce” added Aggarwal

“As a professional company with a proper corporate setup, we understand that HR policies and practices are responsible for a company’s growth. Bearing that in mind, we have a structured and standardized HR system in place. We give a chance to youngsters through campus visits. We also invest heavily in the training of our employees. We function as a family, keeping in mind the interests of both individual employees and the organization,” said Kush Aggarwal, head - marketing, Bikano.