New maternity bill to have negative impact in startup ecosystem; may lead to skewed recruitment

The Government of India had recently passed a new maternity bill which allows a pregnant women 26 weeks of paid leaves as compared to 12 weeks which is currently applicable. Although it is hailed as a progressive step all around the country by the business houses, startups are a bit divided on its advantage to the women employee in current ecosystem. While some startups said they cannot afford the cost of hiring somebody who will be out of office for such long period, others were of the view that the new maternity bill will play a bill role in recruiting a married women employee.

Pratish Sanghvi, Director and co-founder of Grab, a logistics service for business and merchants, echoed his sentiments about the bill and said that “The increase of more than double of maternity benefits days shall definitely have an impact on costs or we have to accept lower productivity levels in some functional areas. While we are in favour of this initiative, the increase from 12 to 26 weeks should have been done gradually over years”. Although some may discount his words for being a man not fully understanding the empathy of a women, some of the women entrepreneurs, such as Upasana Taku of Mobikwik and Suchi Mukherjee from Limeroad, are also of the view that gradual increase was a prudent solution rather than a single time jump.

Another argument is that startup is a nascent ecosystem. Some of the players out there are not even 6 month old, and taking 6 month long maternity leave will not bode well both for the employer as well as the employee’s career track. Although the judgement is still out, it will take another 12-18 months to gauge the true impact of this amendment on hiring and work life balance.