Axis Mutual Fund Case Study

Axis Asset Management Company, India’s seventh-largest mutual fund house, launched its first scheme in October 2009. It attributes its success to long-term wealth creation, a customer-centric view, and fostering long-term relationships. With over 60 lakh active investor accounts and a presence in 100+ cities, Axis AMC has grown significantly.

With significant growth in assets under management (AUM) reflecting industry dynamism, Axis AMC faces intensified competition for top talent across critical functions such as fund management, sales, marketing, and technology. This competitive landscape necessitates a focus on building a compelling employer brand and delivering exceptional candidate experiences to attract and retain skilled professionals.
Recognizing the need for a scalable recruitment solution, Axis AMC partnered with RippleHire to modernize its hiring processes. This transformation involved integrating advanced technology to streamline workflows, enhance recruitment efficiency, and ensure regulatory compliance.

Through this strategic collaboration, Axis AMC aimed to reinforce its position as a leading asset management company in India. Explore further how Axis AMC is transforming its recruitment strategy to lead in talent acquisition.

Elevating candidate interactions to enriching experiences – Axis AMC’s journey to 4.85 / 5 candidate experience score

0 /5

Qualitative score – Candidate feedback rating

0 Min

Time to apply

0 Min

to submit documents

0 Days

Axis Asset Management Company, established in 2009, has grown tremendously in the Indian mutual fund industry. Their success is rooted in a strong foundation of principles: long-term wealth creation, a customer-centric approach, and fostering long-term relationships. Axis AMC prioritizes risk management and takes a holistic view, focusing on investors’ underlying dreams and aspirations. With over 6 million active investor accounts and a presence across 100 Indian cities, they are a force to be reckoned with.

The Mutual Fund Industry Boom and Its Recruitment Challenges

The Indian mutual fund industry has witnessed a remarkable surge in recent years, with Assets Under Management (AUM) doubling between March 2018 and February 2024. This rapid growth has ignited a fierce competition for top talent across various functions, including fund management, sales, marketing, product development, technology, and operations. Roles like fund managers, equity research analysts, sales relationship managers, and digital marketing specialists are in particularly high demand.

The Challenge of Declining Tenure and High Attrition

The mutual fund industry grapples with declining employee tenures and high attrition rates. This necessitates the constant need to hire quality talent in large volumes. To attract talent in this candidate-driven market, establishing a strong employer brand and delivering a positive candidate experience are paramount.

Axis AMC’s Exponential Growth and Recruitment Needs

Axis AMC has mirrored the industry’s growth, experiencing a 35% increase in headcount during FY24. This exponential hiring trajectory presented them with several crucial business needs:

Hiring at Scale: Efficiently managing year-on-year hiring volume increases was essential to attract high-quality talent across diverse roles.
Consistent Candidate Experience: Building a strong employer brand hinged on delivering a positive candidate experience throughout the recruitment process.
Compliance: Rapid growth demanded enhanced compliance and auditing during hiring to minimize risks.
Access to Talent Pools: Expanding their reach and accessing new talent pools were crucial for attracting top talent.
Process Efficiency: Optimizing the recruitment process was necessary to maximize productivity and achieve business growth goals.
Data-Driven Insights: Data-driven recruitment KPIs were vital for informed decision-making while scaling recruitment efforts.

The Pitfalls of a Manual Recruitment Process

A highly person-dependent recruitment process was a major obstacle hindering Axis AMC’s ability to provide a positive candidate experience.

Here are some specific challenges they faced with the legacy system:

Limited Scalability: The manual process couldn’t handle the increasing volume of hiring, impacting time-to-fill and recruiter productivity.
Weak Employer Branding: Limited avenues to showcase Axis AMC’s value proposition and differentiate them from competitors.
Poor User Experience: The fragmented process offered no opportunity to create a smooth and customized candidate journey.
Limited Feedback Capture: The absence of a formal feedback mechanism hampered Axis AMC’s ability to improve the candidate experience.
Unhealthy Sourcing Mix: Limited visibility into top talent pools due to ad-hoc sourcing methods, leading to increased recruitment costs.
Data Tracking and Analytics Challenges: The lack of recruitment metrics hindered data-driven decision-making and compliance audits.
Inconsistent Communication: Verbal and email-based communication created gaps and inconsistencies in candidate engagement.

Enter RippleHire: Transforming the Candidate Experience

Axis AMC recognized the need to enhance candidate experience through technology and continuous process improvement. Their aim was to create a structured, compliant, and efficient recruitment workflow that effectively communicated their brand value and provided a personalized, seamless experience for candidates.

A Feature-Rich Talent Acquisition Platform

To achieve their strategic goals, Axis AMC partnered with RippleHire, a leading talent acquisition cloud platform. RippleHire’s functionalities addressed various aspects of Axis AMC’s recruitment process:

The platform provided a career site that showcased Axis AMC’s brand, employer value proposition, employee testimonials, and work culture, attracting top talent.
Streamlining processes was made possible by enabling bulk actions for recruiters, such as stage-wise movement, profile sharing, and downloading resumes in bulk.
Axis AMC’s specific requirements for salary calculation and offer approval workflows could be configured within the platform.

Empowering a Strategic Approach to Recruitment

With RippleHire’s functionalities in place, Axis AMC transformed their recruitment approach from reactive to proactive. They gained a strategic edge in areas like:

Requisition Planning: Effective planning for future hiring needs.
Candidate Pipeline Building: Proactive sourcing and building a strong talent pipeline.
Assessments: Streamlined candidate assessments.
Interviews: Efficient interview scheduling and management.
Offer Management: Automated and compliant offer management.
Onboarding: Seamless candidate onboarding experience.

This streamlined recruitment process empowered Axis AMC to:

Scale Hiring Efficiently: Manage increased hiring volumes effectively.
Reduce Costs: Minimize recruitment costs through automation and streamlined workflows.
Strengthen Compliance: Ensure adherence to regulations throughout the hiring process.
Deliver a Seamless Candidate Experience: Provide a positive and engaging experience for candidates throughout the recruitment journey.

Building a Collaborative Ecosystem for Success

Axis AMC understood the importance of engaging key stakeholders throughout the implementation process. These stakeholders included:

Regional HRs (RHRs)
Zone HRs (ZHRs)
HR services team
Business leaders
Recruitment vendors
Background verification vendors

To ensure successful project adoption, Axis AMC conducted discovery sessions with each stakeholder group. These sessions mapped out their touchpoints in the recruitment process and identified the challenges each user persona faced. This fostered a sense of ownership among stakeholders, ultimately driving a remarkable >95% user adoption rate within the first month of launch.

Implementation and Change Management:

Partnership with RippleHire Team: Axis AMC partnered with RippleHire’s team to leverage their expertise and ensure timely implementation and onboarding. Collaborative structures facilitated communication and coordination between internal teams, ensuring a seamless flow of information for a smooth project rollout.
Training and Support: The TA team and hiring managers, accustomed to the ad-hoc, offline recruitment methods, required ongoing training to encourage them to utilize the platform effectively. Additionally, recognizing that overall success hinged on user adoption, Axis AMC actively involved all key stakeholders throughout the process, including TA, HR, business units, and third-party partners like vendors and background verification agencies.
Educating the TA Team: Educating the TA team on how the platform’s various features supported their goals of rapid hiring, positive candidate experience, and strong employer branding, ultimately ensured user engagement with the platform.

Leveraging Metrics for Continuous Improvement:

Tracking Adoption Metrics: Axis AMC regularly tracked adoption metrics, turnaround times at various hiring stages, and candidate experience scores. This data ensured the team consistently delivered on their expected value.
Leadership Sponsorship: Leveraging leadership influence enhanced internal engagement and ensured the complete online implementation of the recruitment process.

Future Outlook:

Integration with HR Systems:
As Axis AMC continues leveraging technology in its HR processes, they plan to integrate RippleHire with other HR systems like Human Capital Management (HCM) or Learning Management Systems (LMS) for a unified and seamless employee experience.
This would further enhance process efficiency and improve the candidate and recruiter experience.

Expansion to Other Business Units:
Following the successful deployment of RippleHire, Axis AMC might consider expanding its use to other business units or subsidiaries within the Axis group, further streamlining recruitment processes across the organization.

Leveraging Emerging Technologies:
As new technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, and advanced analytics emerge, Axis AMC plans to explore ways to integrate these with the RippleHire platform or their existing processes.
This could involve leveraging AI to assist sourcing teams in becoming more efficient and reducing time-to-hire, or utilizing impersonation checking tools to eliminate fraud.

Final Thoughts

Axis AMC’s case demonstrates how a strategic approach to talent acquisition, coupled with the right technology partner like RippleHire, can revolutionize the recruitment process. By focusing on automation, collaboration, data-driven decision making, and a positive candidate experience, Axis AMC achieved significant improvements in scaling their hiring, reducing costs, building a strong employer brand, and attracting top talent in a competitive market.

Building a talent powerhouse: The strategic recruitment approach of Axis AMC