Total Reward Strategies to Attract and Retain Employees: An Analysis of Indian Startups

In recent years, India has seen exponential growth and increase in its number of startups. The startup ecosystem in India has taken off, resulting in a startup revolution. To promote and foster this revolution, the Indian government has also undertaken several reforms and schemes to make the business environment conducive to the growth of new startups. Startups foster economic development in any economy, provide the young population opportunity for self-employment, create new jobs and use technology to fix problems faced by consumers. As such, realizing the importance of startups for an economy like India that has a high percentage of unemployment, this paper investigates and reviews one of the main challenges of attraction and retention of talented personnel faced by startups. This paper uses literature-based analysis to investigate and analyze the innovative total reward practices that are used by the top startups and unicorns in India. Thus, the paper acts as a guide to reward practitioners and startup founders in framing total reward strategies that will help them in retaining and motivating their employees.