HR Associate

A bit about axiTrust. And the moonshot we are chasing!

If "surety bond" did not ring an immediate bell, that is the problem and the opportunity.

Every year, thousands of crores of MSME working capital sits locked inside bank guarantees. It is the price businesses pay just to participate: to win a government tender, to bid for a corporate contract, to prove they will deliver. The bank guarantee is how Indian commerce builds trust. It is also slow, expensive and largely inaccessible to the small and mid-sized business that actually does most of the building.

A surety bond does the same job better. It is how a contractor proves to a project owner that they will deliver, without tying up their balance sheet to do it. It is the trust infrastructure that makes tendering work. And in a country running an infrastructure push of the scale India is, the category we are creating has the potential to move GDP, not just metrics.

We are building India's first full-stack surety bond platform for MSMEs, and we are only beginning to discover how far the use case goes. Every industry that runs on contracts, tenders and performance guarantees is a potential home for surety bonds. Every new use case is a new set of relationships to build: Insurers who underwrite the risk, Beneficiaries who accept the bond, Channel Partners who distribute it and MSMEs who finally have access to a tool their larger competitors have always had. This is not a market we are entering. It is a category we are creating.

We were founded in 2024 by serial entrepreneurs and industry veterans who have done this before (ex-founders of numberz, acquired by Chargebee), backed by global VCs and industry veterans, with platform partnerships already running across Government, leading Insurers, corporates and PSUs. We are digital-first and AI-savvy by design.

We move at the pace of our change-the-world conviction.

Why this role even exists. And why now.

axiTrust has grown from 7 to 40 people in 18 months. That growth was led by conviction and pace. It was not led by people infrastructure.

Hiring has been reactive. Onboarding has been a laptop and a calendar invite. Processes exist in founders' heads. Culture is holding together on shared history and goodwill — which is a tribute to the team we have built, but not a system you can scale. We have just completed our values exercise. We know what we stand for. What we do not yet have is someone who can take that and make it real: in how we hire, how we onboard, how we give feedback and how we recognise and part ways with people.

The person in this role will be the architect and the operator. Not one or the other. If this works, axiTrust in 12 months looks like a company where hiring is structured and quality-tracked, processes run without founder intervention, the team can articulate what we stand for and new people feel the culture on day one — not month three.

What you will own. All four of them.

The hiring engine. You own end-to-end recruitment for most roles. Not coordination. Ownership. That means briefing the agency, running structured assessments, coordinating panel interviews and managing offers. For senior roles you prepare the hiring manager rather than running the process alone. Target HR provides sourcing air cover. You are the accountable party for quality.

By 90 days: Every open role has a documented brief, an active pipeline and a structured evaluation rubric. No role in process without a clear definition of what good looks like.

By 12 months: 80% of planned hires closed within agreed timelines, with post-90-day quality assessments tracked for every hire. Hiring manager satisfaction is something you can measure, not just claim.

People operations that run without chasing. Onboarding, confirmation, exits, leaves, payroll inputs and documentation. Clean, timely and tracked in the HRMS. Founders are not following up on paperwork. The junior HR executive reports to you and handles administrative support.

By 90 days: The employee lifecycle from offer to exit is fully documented and running through the system without manual intervention.

By 12 months: Founders have not had to chase a single people operations task in six months. The function runs itself.

The processes we do not yet have. At least three things need to be designed and made live in your first year: a performance review cycle, a career framework for individual contributors and a structured onboarding programme. Not borrowed templates. Designed for axiTrust's stage, team profile and pace.

By 90 days: The onboarding programme is live and has been used by at least two new joiners. The performance review framework is drafted and signed off by founders.

By 12 months: All three processes have completed at least one full cycle and been iterated based on honest feedback from the team.

Culture that people can actually feel. The values exercise is done. Your job is to make ICGRIT visible in the day-to-day: in how we hire, in how we give feedback, in how we recognise effort and in how we have the hard conversations. You will run a simple, repeatable pulse mechanism. You will flag risks early. You will advocate for the team in front of leadership, not around them.

By 90 days: A values rollout plan is live. At least one cultural initiative beyond a recognition programme is running.

By 12 months: Without prompting, at least five people describe axiTrust's culture in terms that match the values we defined. The Glassdoor page, if someone looks, reflects a company that means what it says.

Your first 90 days. No nasty surprises.

The first 15 days. Context before change.

Meet everyone. Understand the team across Delhi and Mumbai. Know who the senior leaders are, how they operate and where the friction sits. Your output at the end of month one is a clear-eyed view of what exists, what is missing and what is most urgent - presented back to founders with your own assessment, not just observations.

Days 16 to 60. Build the foundation.

HRMS running cleanly. Onboarding programme designed and tested on one new joiner. Every open role has a structured brief and an active pipeline. You have had working conversations with every senior leader and know their hiring needs for the next quarter. First process gap identified and a solution in draft.

Days 60 to 90. First things live.

The performance review framework is drafted and signed off. Onboarding is running. At least three roles have moved from brief to offer stage. A 12-month people plan is presented to founders with targets you are willing to be held to.

At 12 months. Here is what matters.

Founders are not in the weeds of people operations. Hiring quality is tracked and improving. The team can describe the culture in terms that match what we actually stand for. New people feel it on day one. You are the person senior leaders go to proactively when they have a hard people call to make — not just a process to follow.

What a week actually looks like.

• 40% Recruitment. Sourcing, screening, coordinating, assessing, closing. Across levels and functions, working with Target HR and directly. This is the primary output of the role right now. Quality of hire matters more than speed, but both are tracked.
  
• 30% People operations. Payroll inputs, documentation, HRMS, lifecycle management. Clean and on time. No chasing. The junior HR executive handles the administrative layer; you own the outcomes.
  
• 15% Process design and culture work. Writing frameworks, iterating on what is live, designing what does not exist yet. Never perfecting what is already working. Always building for the next 18 months, not the next 18 people.
  
• 15% Founder and leadership partnership. Working sessions with Rajeev and Aditya and Mukund on hiring decisions, people risks, culture gaps and team health. You are not a support function. You are a thinking partner.
  

The people you will work with.

You report to Nitu Singh, People Success Manager. A junior HR and admin executive works alongside you and handles administrative and operational support. This is the starting configuration; the function will grow as the company does.

Your primary orbit is the full leadership team: sales, product, underwriting and the founders' office, across Delhi and Mumbai. You will manage the ongoing relationship with TargetHR, our embedded hiring partner, who owns sourcing and ATS management through Zoho Recruit. An ex-CHRO who serves as axiTrust's HR adviser is available for complex people decisions, policy guidance and compensation structuring - a senior resource you can draw on, not a layer you report through.

Requirements

What we hope you bring.

You have been the HR function at an early-stage startup. Not part of a team. The function. You joined when there was nothing — no HRMS, no policies, no onboarding — and you built something that actually worked. You know the difference between a policy that looks good and one that holds when a founder disagrees with it.

You hire well. Not in volume but in judgment. You can write a brief, assess a CV, run a structured interview and make a confident recommendation on a candidate at any level, from a 20,000 rupee intern to a senior leader. You have made a bad hire before. You know what you missed and you did something differently the next time.

You are practical about culture. You do not talk about it in abstractions. You design small, consistent things that build trust over time and you are honest when something is not working. You can hold your ground with a founder or a senior operator who pushes back on a people call — and you do it through evidence and relationship, not by invoking your title.

You are curious about technology and unsentimental about tools. HRMS, ATS, AI for JD drafting, App Script for automating what used to be manual. If it makes the work cleaner and faster, you learn it. If it adds noise, you ignore it.

You do not need to have worked in insurance or fintech. You do need to be the kind of person who reads the product deck before day one.

What good looks like at six months.

• Every open role has a structured brief, an active pipeline and a post-hire quality check at 90 days. No role is in process without a clear definition of what good looks like.
  
• Founders have not chased a single people operations task in three months. :)
  
• The onboarding programme has been used by at least three new joiners and iterated at least once based on their feedback.
  
• A performance review cycle is designed, signed off and has been communicated to the full team.
  
• At least one senior leader who had no relationship with the people function now comes to you proactively when they have a people problem.
  
• The team talks about the culture in terms that match what we actually stand for. Not because they were told to. Because they feel it.
  

How we live ICGRIT in this role

I.C.G.R.I.T. is how we work. These values were not written on a retreat and filed away. They have evolved with us over many months. We strive hard that they show up in every interaction, review, every offer letter and more importantly, in every Tuesday afternoon when the easy choice and the right choice are different.

Integrity.

The real test is what you do when no one is watching. We act with honesty, fairness and consistency: with customers, with partners and with each other. In a category built on trust between counterparties, how we conduct ourselves is part of the product.

Commitment.

Done beats perfect. We deliver outcomes, not activity reports. The test is simple: did the thing you said would happen, happen?

Growth.

High standards and a human culture are not in tension here. We hold each other to excellence and we support each other to get there. Growth means getting better as a professional and as a person, often at the same time.

Responsibility.

We build with, not for. axiTrust resides inside an ecosystem: Insurers, Reinsurers, Government, MSMEs and Partners who all need to win for this category to work. Being responsible for your own work is the floor, not the ceiling.

Innovation.

We are building infrastructure that is meant to last, not score points in the short term. That means experimenting with intent and killing what does not work without ego. Short-term cleverness at the cost of long-term credibility is not innovation. It is noise.

Trust.

Trust is earned, not assumed. We earn it through reliability, professionalism and consistency: with customers, with partners and with each other. Trust is as much the product as the platform.

Honestly? This might not be for you if...

• You need a structured HR team around you before you can operate independently.
  
• You manage through the authority your title gives you rather than the trust you have built.
  
• You treat culture as a calendar event rather than something you design deliberately into daily work.
  
• You are looking for a defined playbook rather than the space to write one.
  
• You think "HR's job is to support the business" and have never disagreed with a hiring manager in your life.
  
• You need processes to be fully defined before you can execute against them.
  
• You think working in a regulated, technical, slightly unsexy industry is beneath you.
  
• You want a logo your friends recognise at parties.
  
• "We have always done it this way" sits comfortably in your vocabulary.
  

Benefits

What's on the table. Comp and the rest.

• Competitive fixed and variable pay combo calibrated to your experience. The specific range is shared with shortlisted candidates after the first conversation. ESOPs are part of the package, not a footnote.
  
• Health cover for you and immediate family.
  
• Annual learning budget for courses, certifications or the AI tools you have been meaning to explore seriously.
  
• In-office working out of Gurgaon, Monday to Friday. We are early-stage and we learn fastest in the same room. We will not pretend otherwise.
  
• A founders' office that treats people success as a business priority, not an overhead function.