What the incumbents feel about the recent surge of HR Tech startups

The influx of startups has accelerated innovation and is inspiring us to do the same. We track the startups in our space, get inspired from them, also look for the ones we think might be a threat, and we try to learn their ways of working. Startup activity helps us understand the market needs, and we actively look at opportunities to either partner with (so that we can connect them to our platform) or acquire new products.

Niel Nickolaisen, Senior Vice President, Chief Technology Officer, O. C. Tanner

Startups can create innovation at levels nobody else can. Bigger companies, on the other hand, can provide scalability and operational excellence which start- ups can’t. Established players are ready to pay a big premium to startups and acquire startups because it is a way for them to outsource innovation. I think startups eventually have to be acquired and we will see further consolidation in the market because the pie isn’t big enough for everybody to have a piece.

Theofilos Vasileiadis, President, Singapore, and India, CareerBuilder

At Aon, we continue to see partnerships as a great way to work with many of these companies to help clients. From time to some of these companies could be opportunities for making strategic investments and we will do that if we see long term value and client impact.

Nitin Sethi, Partner, Chief Commercial Officer, Aon Hewitt Consulting

Best of breed solutions that ebable unique strengths and differentiations specific to an organization's priority HR process while being able to integrate well in a heterogeneous interoperable technology and application platform environment is becoming the “new normal”. The adoption of HR technology is in its infancy in India and there is a large opportunity for companies to relalize greater priductivity and efficiency.

Rajiv Burman, Head HR – APAC, Kronos