Pune Inc: 3 Symbiosis roommates behind market leading firm that recruits for biotech, pharma, healthcare industries
Pune-based Biojobz, which specialises in finding niche talent from across the world for biotech, pharma, and healthcare industries, is working aggressively on sealing its position as a market leader.
Earlier this year, the company announced its growth strategy — helping recruit 500 professionals, increasing its presence in medical diagnostics, clinical research, and hospital and healthcare spaces; and tapping new movements in knowledge process outsourcing (KPO), among others.
“We feel that the healthcare domain is going to increase this year while Pharma and Biotech are under consolidation,” says Dr Ganesh Nikam, one of the founders.
Almost 80 per cent of Biojobz’s clients come from the export market. “There’s a lot of healthcare outsourcing that is happening in India. Currently, one of the clients that we are working with requires us to hire 50-60 doctors per month. We anticipate this hiring to go to 100. Because of the success of this client, there are three more KPOs that are coming to India. Their entire hiring is getting outsourced to us,” adds Nikam.
The current clients of Biojobz are also expanding their business. Nikam says that a lot of Indian companies want to become an alternative to China with respect to Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (API). “We have a lot of API clients who are expanding their capacities by 20-30 per cent of their capacities. We anticipate a growth in mid-level and senior-level hiring due to increased business activity in these areas. International businesses are also picking us, so that is the reason for us having a very positive outlook,” he says.
Biojobz will be closing this year with revenue of around Rs 4.5 crore. Last year, the figures were around Rs 3.7 crore. “Next year, we should cross Rs 6 crore if everything goes well,” says Nikam.
Biojobz is working with multiple companies to look for the right person to head Plasma Proteins Manufacturing; non-interventional paediatric cardiologist, contract development and manufacturing operations head, general manager of Animal Feed Operations or Global Head Regulatory Operations.
The story of Biojobz can be traced to the corridors of Symbiosis. Nikam, Surojit Nandy and Abhay Kumar were roommates at the university during their MBA studies. In the next few years, they moved and excelled in different professional fields, before coming together to create an e-commerce startup in 2007 that bombed. Though the founders lost their savings, they learnt something from the failure. They all decided that they have ‘burnt their ships’ and are not going back. The same year, they set up Biojobz with a focused approach.
The company’s strength lies not only in talent spotting but also in its extensive in-house training programme that stretches three to six months. “The quality of talent in the market is often not up to the mark. So we develop our own talent through a 160-hour training module that is online and offline. Today, you will find that several top leaders in many companies have a Bojobz background,” says Nikam.
How is the company handling post-pandemic effects on employment, such as resignations as people are switching jobs to get higher salaries? “A lot of things have happened due to which the employer-employee trust has got shattered. A lot of people were expecting an increment during the Covid years and didn’t get that. Post-Covid, companies cannot give high increments because they are making up for losses of the past years. The loyalty factor for companies has gone down. Employees, who have got used to working from home, are reluctant to return to their regular office routine. It is going to take time to build that trust,” says Nikam.
