HR SYSTEMS & PRACTICES OF A START UP

ORGANIZATION

Course: PGCHRM – 17

Name of the faculty: Dr. M.G JOMON

Subject: Introduction to Personnel Management (IPMRH14-1)

Submitted by (In case of Group): Group No: 19

Group No: 19 (assigned by VIL office)

Ms HARSHADA PATHARE, Roll No: - 113549 (SID/SMS ID)

Mr. RAJAN GAONKAR, Roll No.:- 113697 (SID/SMS ID)
Ms. Sapna Shruthi Chitale, Roll No.:- 113863 (SID/SMS ID)
Ms Nancy Sam Thomas, Roll No.:- 113468 (SID/SMS ID)
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I am highly indebted to entire HR faculty of SNAPDEAL for their guidance as well as for providing
the necessary information required for our project completion.

I would like to express my gratitude to Dr. M. G. Jomon for their valuable knowledge and
encouragement which helped us in completion of this project.

We would like to express my special gratitude and thanks to all XLRI faculties for their support.
HR SYSTEMS & PRACTICES OF A START UP
ORGANIZATION

(Year of Incorporation - February 2010)

 INDEX

CONTENTS PAGE NO

1.) OVERVIEW

 Introduction, Vision, Mission.

2.) Organization Structure

 Core Team Members

 Hierarchical Chart

3.) Culture at Snapdeal

 Values

 People

 Employee Development

 CSR Activities

 Employee Retention

4.) Career Planning System at Snapdeal

 Recruitment

 Learning & Competency Development

 Performance Management System

 Talent Retention

 Growth of the Organization

 SWOT ANALYSIS of SNAPDEAL

5.) HR Challenges

6.) Way Forward for SNAPDEAL

Introduction

Launched in February 2010, by two brain genius, Kunal Bahl, a Wharton Graduate and Rohit
Bansal, alumni of IIT Delhi, Snapdeal.com is an online marketplace, featuring a wide assortment
of products across categories like Mobiles, Electronics, Fashion accessories, Apparel, Sports,
Books; and services like Restaurants, Spas & Entertainment amongst others. Snapdeal.com
has seen phenomenal growth in a span of three years and is currently the largest online
marketplace in India. Snapdeal manages TrustPay and SafeShip platforms that provide buyer &
seller protection and intelligent logistics enablement. The company is run by a very young,
dynamic & innovative team of over 1000 people. Even leading global investors such as eBay Inc.,
Intel Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Nexus Venture Partners are investors.

The hidden star behind Snap deal’s success is Vani Kola, MD of IndoUS Venture Partners who
invested in the business in 2009.

Snapdeal has more than 298 competitors in market – Facebook, Ebay India, flipkart, Global
USA, ecommerce sites etc.

The organization is enthusiastic and they expect same for their customers. Customer
satisfaction is priority and continued to maintain it, under any circumstances. From its first
birthday, it has grown. Today they are 4 th and have a subscriber base of 15 million
customers and 25,000 transactions every day with the number is constantly on a rise. Snapdeal
is growing and the journey seems to be ecstatic. From an office in a basement started with 2
people daring to dream, it has spread all over India with 12 offices and presence in more than
50 cities. There are over 1500 people who are employed with Snapdeal to get life better day by
day. The employee strength consists of people who have been recruited from reputed
institutions like IITs and IIMs. Even the recruitment has spread to hire talent form US & Hong
Kong.

Let’s understand the HR systems and practices of this organization for our learning purpose. The
foundation of Snapdeal is based on Mission, Vision and Values for greater success.
MISSION

To create life changing experiences through its platform by connecting buyers to sellers of
millions of products from thousands of national, international and regional brands.

PHILOSOPHY

To treat our customers the way we like to be treated.

VISION

To make Snap deal the #1 business-to-consumer marketplace in India, by giving merchants ever-
increasing freedom and tools to supply locally and sell nationally.

ORGANIZATION STRUCTURE

Typical Structure of Business at Snapdeal

GENERAL MANAGER

REGIONAL HEAD

REGIONAL MANAGER

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MANAGER

SENIOR BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATE

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATE

CORE TEAM OF SNAPDEAL

CEO – KUNAL BAHL (Board)

LEVEL - I

 CFO – Aakash Moondhara VP Finance - Vijay Ajmera

 COO – ROHIT BANSAL

 COMM. DIRECTOR - Rasika Mathur AVP Computer & PHP - Rishabh Arora

 HEAD – HUMAN RESOURCES - Anupama Beri

 BUSINESS HEAD – LOKESH MAMTANI

 BUSINESS HEAD DEVELOPMENT - Megha Ajwani VP Business Development - Tony Navin

 CUSTOMER SERVICE HEAD - Dipakshi Khaira

 BUSINESS STRATEGY - Abhishek Passi
 VP – ENGINEERING - Amitabh Misra
 FASHION MERCHANDISING - Amit Maheshwari
 VP MARKETING - Sandeep K
 VP PRODUCT - Ankit Khanna

CULTURE AT SNAPDEAL

Snapdeal has formed a cultural team to promote the cultural values and embed them in the employee
genes. The average employee age is 26 years and men woman ratio is 1:2.

Snapdeal’s culture is termed as “smart, generous and humble,” determines the speed of growth of a
non-traditional business.

Core values that incorporate the Culture of 4 year old Snapdeal Family:

Innovation - Creativity is the core need of the business values. The employees are given freedom
to take informed, responsible risks and be accountable.
Change – They are ever evolving and believe in driving change, embracing every opportunity
with open arms.
Openness - They encourage every team member to share ideas and feedback and openly
thereby build strong relationships on Trust and Faith.
Ownership - Every member owns the responsibilities they are assigned. We foster collaboration
while building individual accountability.
Honesty - They believe in the integrity essence and doing the right thing under all circumstances.

People:
Employees are smart and committed to what they do. But the philosophy rooted is no one makes a big
deal of that, so the environment is pretty genial. This should a good practice for all organization to
follow.
For a 1500+ strong company, the company has an open-door policy and treats everyone at all levels on
the same page that promotes employee retention. So employees don’t feel left out or lost or have
existential questions about their contribution or growth.
Creating something from scratch and daring to dream, is what is ingrained in the DNAs of snapdealites
right from the first day we start working in Snapdeal. There is an aura of youthfulness in the system and
they make the best of every opportunity so that the positive results just pour out. Each one of employee
is on their toes, trying to get something new, making a dream turn into a reality.

The main success that reached a startup like Snapdeal is to PEOPLE only since they have no plant and
machinery or labor or capital equipments. The success is only due to the enduring motivation and
dedication of the employees to reach the top. When only people are responsible for the growth their
focus, motivation, skills all matter tremendously along with the leadership and guidance.

Classic example of Best HR Practices and Workplaces to learn.

Snapdeal emphasis on the innovation and open-mindedness as a crucial competency for the
employees to grow rapidly. In HR practices too, they always kept thinking about how to
motivate our people learn fast and learn from each other in a team spirit. The good ideas from
employees in the system are communicated openly and if considered good are reaped in the
process throughout the organization rapidly.

This HR strategy has motivated even Business associate to come up with their own creative
ideas and share with CEO or COO without hesitation. This is the USP of Snap deal’s cultural
system employee enablement and self-made specific cultural values.

Employee Development

Snapdeal wants its employees to grow even if they need to disengage with employees on a
positive note and they are willing if they go on and build something valuable. But Snapdeal is so
young that no employees have left and attrition if any is not of red light alert till now.

Employee Relations

 Formulates the Company and HR policies and communicate to the employees for
Process-orientation through meetings, workshops.
 Arrange the Exit Interviews for resigned employees.

 Vintage recognition.
  HR plans various events for employee satisfaction needs and engagement Update all
staff members for all the revised company policies.

 HR team is involved in resolving issues faced by employees on a day to day basis ranging
from salary to reimbursement queries regarding leaves and appraisals.

CSR Activities

The fulfilling moment in the journey for Snapdeal was their contribution to create social impact.
As a part of its social responsibility, the company has adopted Shiv Nagar village where it will
address the basic problems of the people. As we wanted a long term association, we have
adopted the village for a period of five years and in the next phase the company will be carrying
out different activities, including installation of computers in schools, health care and books to
students. Installing hand pumps in a village totally transformed the lives of people. As a token
appreciation to Snapdeal.com for the upliftment of the village, the locals have officially
renamed their village Shiv Nagar to the new Snapdeal.com Nagar - an appreciation earned by
Jamshetji Nusserwanji Tata and Gujarmal Modi.

Employee Engagement

Employees at Snapdeal have a GEN Y Culture in their workplace as the average age group is 26
years.

Full of young dreams and hope the pace of Snapdeal is SPEED & ONLY SPEED.

Employees have flexi work times; meeting rooms are open to discussions, sessions, gossip
groups, celebrations. Employees have surprise pizza parties or festival are celebrated with joy.
Snapdeals sponsors many perks on employees in form of Sodexho passes and coupons. The
basement of office premises is used as a dance club break, beach type setup is done outside the
door for relaxation and 4th floor has a photo shoot room for a change. Employees have fun and
eco-learning in the campus along with dedicated performance.

Snapdeal believes in sharing the vision and mission plan with the employees to feel engaged
and aware of what we all as a company are working towards. This helps boost employee morale
and also creates a sense of loyalty and belonging in them.
The policies of the organization are formed and communicated to the employees through these
fun-filled activities and meetings. The HR further strengthens the understanding for the
employees through discussions, group meetings etc.

Snapdeal creates a fun atmosphere where interpersonal skills are developed. Employees can
unwind while at work, meet new employees, interact with other teams and have some fun
activity. The organization strives to maintain a healthy work-life balance and keep all means of
communication open while being flexible to changes within the organization and ideas that
people may come up with

Snapdeal mostly, the only company in India who lifts their entire management team on the
website page.

Human Resources at SNAPDEAL -

RECRUITMENT PROCESS MODEL

Startup DNA of candidates should be absolutely raw passion and learning attitude.

The underlying objective is to look for smart, passionate people with an open mind set,
flexible attitude, and an impressive personality. But the most important requirement is to
look for cultural fitment of prospective candidate.

Recruitment Process is made up of three rounds to evaluate applicants. The interview process
was very stringent. Even today, from mid to senior level management and senior level team
members; the panel board does an average 6 rounds of interviews. The selected members need
to be very smart and motivated people.
1st round is a written test. It consists of eleven aptitude questions which are to be solved in one
hour and marks GI aptitude of applicants. For software profile there are five more questions
based on C and Data Programming Structures along with these 11 questions to test the software
aptitude.

2nd round is an interview round. The round had no definite pattern. Candidates are asked
puzzles, HR questions and estimation questions (like estimate number of street lamps in your
college, windows in this rooms.

3rd round also an interview round. In this round candidates were asked some puzzles which you
can find in book or on aptitude questionnaires. Candidates were also asked to explain about
their summer training project. Interview duration was about 45 minutes.

SOCIAL RECRUITING

In the last quarter, 54% of the people who joined Snapdeal were Snapdeal customers. They
joined Snapdeal because they were customers and really liked Snapdeal initiatives and wanted
to have a work experience here. Snapdeal aim is to be the first stop where the highest quality
talent wants to work. Even employee referrals play major role for filling up new talent pool.
Snapdeal maximizes use of job portals, employee referrals and campus recruiting rather than
consultants. The social media presence on Facebook, Twitter is high with good nos of visitors.

CAMPUS RECRUITMENT

At SnapDeal, opportunities are there for people who can think out of the box, take initiatives
and also roll up their sleeves to get the job done. People with diverse skill sets and backgrounds,
but with the same can-do DNA pattern. The company has organizes MBA Campus recruitment in
cities like Delhi, Cochin, Mumbai to fetch fresh talent and develop them into tomorrow’s bright
future.

But campus recruitment is slight stringent than lateral recruitment. The selection procedure
adopted in terms of campus recruitments is very detailed. The emphasis on elaborate case
studies, tests and presentations wherever necessary along with extensive personal interviews
and HR screenings with senior management. This process scans the right candidates for the job
at hand.

INTERNAL JOB POSTING

Snapdeal encourages a flexible and growth-oriented work environment for employees. The
company is open to internal job postings for employees. The work culture is very flexible
wherein employees have the freedom to experiment and learn along the way. HR advocates
good support to the employees for applying to the positions and the selection is subjected to
stringent merit criteria only.

Objective of the Internal Recruitment –

 To provide fair growth mechanism to the talented pool for retention.
 To ensure job rotation and career enhancement.

COMPENSATION

The salary structure is very employee friendly. The employees are provided with facilities like
medical benefits and flexible working hours. The company ensures pay scale is according to a
person’s caliber and experience warrants. However, the employers believe not to overpay just to
attract the talent.

SNAPDEAL pays the employees 7% more than market range and ensures the productivity is
effective.

The compensation function focuses on designing, formulating, strategizing and implementation.

Designing the system involves collection of internal data and external factor analysis.

Learning and competency development

Various activities are undertaken with regards to Training and development since most of the
talent hired is raw in nature and needs to be developed. The training team of HR organizes in-
house and external training programmes to enhance managerial and IT soft skills of employees.

The Orientation programme is conducted to acquaint the joinees with the Snapdeal Company
and values. Various external trainings are provided by the company based on how and when the
need is generated either by a particular division or function. These programs are centralized and
approval of process-owner is required.

 Competency assessment
 Development centers
 Employee Surveys
 External Trainings and Modules for learning.
  E learning

Developing training calendars

Process:
 Training need identification is done through superiors in reviews. It pprovides inputs as
to what all training is required for employee development. Based on all the needs, a
need identification report is generated.
 All the approved training needs are collated in an excel sheet. Pivot table is created to
understand training requirements, count of employees and respective function/division
 Training calendar is made for every month. It aims to cover the needs on monthly and
Quarterly basis.
 Different types of training programs included in training calendar are e-learning, soft
Skills, functional skills, knowledge skills.
 Date of need identification, date of need completion and date of need applicability are
tracked in the MIS system

Performance Management Process

Objectives
 To understand organization expectation
 Deploy business strategy
 Empowerment, ownership and accountability
 Role clarity
 Facilitate employee development
 Capability and competency development
 Transparency and fairness
 To understand individual expectation
 Identify Key Result Areas (KRA)
 Identify areas of development
 Monitor progress and reward
 Assess objectively and fairly

Performance Development Meeting

 It is a discussion held between Subordinate and Superior

 It helps in precise assessment of results
 It enables discussion about achievement of goals
 It facilitates improvement in work performance
 It is a platform to make construction suggestions
Retaining Talent

Snapdeal believes it’s important to pay what is suitable, for talent and experience and that’s
more of a hygiene factor. But people cannot be retained only on pay because of what you pay,
but there’ll always be somebody else to pay 30% more. So Snapdeal does not do that. They pay
according to what a person’s caliber and experience warrants. However, they ensure that
people have high-quality work environment, which includes quality infrastructure, quality peers,
quality colleagues and quality work. Even open mindedness of your juniors, peers and seniors in
the company, in addition to ensuring that the company is very transparent.

For retention, they conduct various events, team building exercises to ensure that we do
interact with different teams that you otherwise wouldn’t interact with. They do a lot of internal
knowledge transfer programs and also management training programs

Reasons for Growth of Snapdeal

1) The prices: Snapdeal is the cheapest in the market (Not in every product but most). This comes
directly from the higher management that feels that India is a country driven by money. If you have a
product at cheaper cost people will dig you up. Snapdeal thinks of providing a promo code/product at
lower cost as a Marketing Channel. Other companies spend Lakhs of Rs on TV ads snapdeal spends it
providing the product at a cheaper cost.

2) The Reach: Snapdeal has tie up with more than 12 Couriers (Shipper provider). Snapdeal's Reach like
the most Ecommerce website is not limited to Tier 1 and Tier 2. It has a solid presence in Tier 3 and even
Tier 4 cities. Also the COD option is not limited either it is not as much as the Normal payment method
but it is as big as it is possible in India right now with 3rd party logistics.

This again comes from the top management that feels that the ultimate challenge for e-commerce
companies in India is figuring out the operation in Tier 3 - Tier 4 Cities.

3) Largest and most diverse assortment (Well except Books Maybe) : There more than 450
subcategories and more than 5,50,000 Products other than books. The aim is to make Snapdeal One
stop destination for everything.
4) Setting Clear and ambitious Targets and Achieving them. Well this one sounds like it happens in every
company but I assure it doesn't. Snapdeal has a very clear mission set quarter to quarter and achieving
at least 95% of the target or over achieving is becoming part of the culture.

SWOT ANALYIS

Snapdeal

Category Website-online advertising and discount on goods

Sector IT and Technology

USP Excellent customer service and wide array of deals in major cities

STP

Segment Internet users

Target Group Internet users relying on internet for shopping and other transactions

Positioning Positioned as best advertising and discount platform in the market

SWOT Analysis

1. Constant innovations and good branding

2. Vast network of retailers across nation

3. Excellent service through convenient processes

4. Wide range of deals and transactions to choose from

Strength 5. Lots of awards and recognition as best startups, ecommerce etc

1.Services not available in all cities

Weakness 2.Dependence on internet only

Opportunity 1. The markets devoid of internet

 2.Customers reluctant in shopping online can be persuaded
3.Partnerships with bigger corporate houses for bulk selling

1. Can be subjected to frauds

2. Risk of being involved into selling of illegal entities
Threats 3. Newly emerging competitive online shopping portals

Competition

1. Couponduniya.in
2.Khojguru.com
Competitors 3. flipkart.com

HR Challenges

Creating a Human Resource Strategy for Agile E-Businesses

In the face of change, the competent are helpless. Uncertainty and unpredictability invalidate
the very behaviors that make people competent – flawless execution of predictable, reliable
processes for solving particular sets of problems the same way every time -- and so,
understandably enough, the highly competent have a strong preference for the status quo. To
thrive in turbulent times, organizations need incompetents
Accordingly, in devising human resource strategies for agile e-businesses, the first challenge is to
define the behaviors associated with serial incompetence, while the second is to develop key
principles to guide the choice of human resource activities that encourage and sustain these
behaviors. There are three key organizational competencies of agile e-businesses: sensing the
market, mobilizing rapid response, and embedding organizational learning. Second, it is
intended to reinforce the view that these three key organizational competencies are fostered by
a reconfigurable organizational infrastructure that is truly people-driven. The core components
of human resource strategy: the agile employee behaviors and the key principles
That guide the choice of human resource policies, programs, and practices designed to
engender the essential behaviors.

Agile e-businesses essentially seek to engender seven focal behaviors: initiate, innovate,
assume multiple roles, rapidly redeploy, spontaneously collaborate, educate and learn.

The widespread adoption of e-commerce has the below implications for HRM:
 Many types of employees connected to traditional wholesaling and retailing activities
will become redundant.
  New distribution systems based on home deliveries and pick up by customers from new
distribution centers will require the development of a workforce that can fulfil these
new jobs.
 Need to recruit employees with the skills to design, build, develop and maintain effective
web pages that customers use to buy on-line.
 Employees will have to be trained and retrained to use virtual systems for taking,
processing, and arranging for the delivery of orders
 Mergers and acquisitions of Internet companies to provide new on-line services will lead
to large-scale redundancies and redeployment of employees.
 New types of management structures will emerge that will help companies to be more
effective in the new information-rich environment.
 The move towards on-line shopping will lead to the breakdown of traditional systems of
distribution. Large stores selling basic products will become less important, as will the
centralized distribution centers associated with these activities. At the same time, new
jobs connected to home deliveries and new types of distribution centers will arise.
Companies that make the transition from traditional shopping to e-commerce will be
faced with large-scale redundancies. However, they will also have to consider re-training
redundant staff for these new jobs. All companies that enter the world of e-commerce
will have to train workers to use the techniques of the virtual world of on-line shopping.
 Technical staff that can 'work' and develop these new technologies will also have to be
recruited. Given the expected rapid rise in the use of e-commerce systems and the
general shortage of people with good IT skills, this could prove to be a difficult problem.
E-commerce will lead to different types of customer relations problems that will require
the development of appropriate recruitment, training and retraining of staff that can
effectively deal with these problems.
 The large increase in information flows about customers and the ability to process this
information cheaply into commercially valuable knowledge will also require training,
retraining and recruitment of new management staff.
 The development of e-commerce is also likely, in the long-term, to lead to a more
competitive environment in both price and quality terms. This will require management
staff to develop new attitudes and skills in areas connected to value for money, customer
satisfaction and cost control.

Snapdeal : Way Forward

Snapdeal is looking to get very busy this year. According to reports, the company is aiming to
cross the $1 billion sales benchmark by the first quarter of 2015. The company is already half
way there and is expecting to close the current fiscal period with $500 million in sales. Can the
fast moving company double its sales in the period of one year? Going by their past
achievements, it definitely stands a good chance.

Snapdeal started out as a daily deals website in 2010 and pivoted very smartly into an e-
commerce marketplace at just about the right time – following their pivot, daily deals as a
segment saw a decline and e-commerce as a sector grew much stronger. The company then
raced to consolidate its marketplace offerings for both their merchants and customers. They
have also introduced some new features which may help them get to their goals faster. The
company recently announced their Same Day Delivery service in Delhi and NCR in addition to
launching their own payment gateway, KlickPay. Last year, they introduced their escrow service
called TrustPay and shipping solution, SafeShip. They also struck up a partnership with
electronics retailer Vijay Sales and collaborated with eBay India.

The company has said that over the last few months, they have seen a huge increase when it
comes to customers coming to their site and shopping for products. Their growth rates are
estimated to be around 4X-5X growth. It currently has around 20 million members and offers
products across 500 product categories and has 20000 sellers onboard. Future growth,
according to the company, will definitely come from electronics and apparel, two sectors which
see a lot of Indian e-commerce companies agreeing to their potential. The Indian e-commerce
market reportedly grown by 88% in 2013 and this is a good sign for many companies in India as
well as online sellers, as it marks that the e-commerce has become a mainstay when it comes to
people’s buying habits.

Bibliography

Official website of Snapdeal.com

Wikipedia

SWOT ANALYSIS OF SNAPDEAL – www.managementparadise.com