A ‘Slice’ of life in start-up world: 3-day work week

This could easily be your dream job, provided you are willing to take a 20% cut from the going market rate. A Bengaluru-based fintech start-up, Slice, is offering its employees a three-day work week. According to the company, the proposal is a win-win both for the company and the employees since the employees are free to pursue their own interests in the remaining four days and the company gets top-notch employees at a time when Indian companies are facing a talent crunch.

Offer

According to the company’s founder, 28-year-old Rajan Bajaj, this idea gives time to workers to get a fixed monthly income and leaves them enough time to chase their dreams, launch their own start-up or pursue their interests outside of work. All that Slice is asking of its employees is to work with a salary at 80% of the going market rate. The company has 450 employees and it is looking to hire 1,000 more over the next three years.

“This is the future of work,” Bajaj, is quoted as saying in news reports. “People don’t want to be tied down to a job.”

The move comes at a time when investors from across the world are pouring money into India’s tech start-ups, leading to a massive talent deficit and forcing companies to find innovative means to hire new talent. Recently, the social commerce platform Meesho announced a 10-day break so that its workers can unplug and rejuvenate.

Bharatpe has even offered BMW bikes, gadgets and cricket holidays in Dubai to its employees.

For the past seven months, the cybersecurity company TAC security, which employs nearly 200 people, has been working on a four-day week schedule and is likely to announce this as a permanent policy in their Mumbai office. The company has termed this policy as the ‘future of work’.

The founder of ride-hailing app Ola, Bhavish Aggarwal, recently issued a tweet jokingly that he was thinking of outsourcing work to a cheaper destination – San Francisco Bay Area.

Slice, founded in 2016, offers specialised credit services to India’s youth. The fintech startup,which launched nearly 1.1 lakh cards last month, has got financial support from heavyweights including Japan’s Gunosy Capital and India’s Blume Ventures.

Bajaj says that the new hires will work on newer Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) products. He hopes to attract the best talent since, according to him, it is a sop that bigger companies such as Amazon and Google don’t offer.