Paytm will continue to allow employees work from home even as it expands talent acquisition to Tier 2-3 cities, founder and chief executive officer Vijay Shekhar Sharma said on October 28.
“We will be 100% flexible forever for good. We will not force people to come to the office. We have switched to a world where working from home or remote working is a new norm,” said Sharma while talking to journalists ahead of its Rs 18,300 crore initial public offering.
“We have started recruiting in tier two tier three towns such as Jalandar, Ludhiana, Cuttack,” he added.
The company that houses over 11,000 employees will be opening its IPO on November 8 at a price band of Rs 2,080-2,150.
This is touted to be India’s largest market debut, a record that was previously held by Coal India, which raised Rs 15,000 crore over a decade ago.
Paytm is currently India’s second most-valuable internet company, last valued at $16 billion when it raised a billion dollars in November 2019 led by T Rowe Price, Discovery Capital and D1 Capital.
The public offer is expected to take the company’s valuation to $20 billion.
Sharma’s statement comes soon after JLL’s Workers Preference Barometer for India stated that 79% of workforce surveyed, favours working remotely from home at least once a week post Covid 19 pandemic.
Multiple IT companies have also started opening the office doors for the employees in a partial manner.
Tata Consultancy Services for instance, wants to get a majority of its employees back to the office by December, after 18 months of working from home.
The company will encourage senior employees and those who are fully vaccinated to come to the campus. Some executives from the management and delivery sides have been working in the office over the past few weeks and this number will be stepped up slowly.
Peers Infosys and Wipro are also looking at a hybrid model. While Wipro’s leaders have started coming to office twice a week, Infosys may see 20-30 percent of the workforce coming to office over the next six months if the impact of a third wave of Covid-19 is minimal.
