Telegram, Valued At $30-Bn, Has Just 30 Employees!

We select the best of the best of the best engineers as a result of the competitions that we organize. We hold them everywhere for months. So, after a series of competitions, we select best of the best of best and they then may be join our team which is just about 30 engineers - Pavel Durov, Founder, Telegram

Bengaluru: Lean tech companies are in vogue. Globally, several technology firms with hundreds of million dollars revenue have less than a few hundred employees. Take for example the case of popular messaging platform- Telegram. Though the company has a monthly active user base of 1 billion with a valuation of more than $30 billion, the company has a total employee base of 30 people. This is in contrast to traditional HR practices wherein revenue growth is directly proportional to employee count.

Telegram is also beginning another trend in the global corporate world. Its team members are operating fully on remote basis. It means no fancy office and no high fixed cost for the company.

According to the Founder of Telegram- Pavel Durov, the company is all about efficiency and innovation and not about sheer numbers.

“We select the best of the best of the best engineers as a result of the competitions that we organize…We hold them everywhere for months. So, after a series of competitions, we select best of the best of best and they then may be join our team which is just about 30 engineers,” Durov had said in an interview earlier.

No wonder. Telegram doesn’t have any HR department to take care of employee affairs. Not only Telegram, social media platform ‘X’ has far less staffers before it was acquired by Elon Musk. Reportedly, Musk trimmed 75 per cent of its total workforce and still the social media platform continues to operate smoothly.

Another such company is Basecamp, which has around 100 staffers though the Chicago-based tech company has an annual revenue of around $25 million.

There are several such technology companies operating in SaaS space, which have million dollars in revenue with very lean teams. According to industry experts, technology has enabled companies to have such low employee base.

“Artificial intelligence, generative AI, ML, IoT, data analytics and several other emerging technologies have enabled technology firms to operate only through the power of product. They don’t require many employees to scale up these tech products.

That is the reason that such tech firms have such lean teams,” said an industry source. However, not all tech companies can operate without a big team. While product companies are better-placed to operate through lean teams, companies that are into maintenance and support require huge employee base for their operations. IT services firms like Accenture, TCS, Cognizant, Infosys, Wipro, HCLTech and others have lakhs of staffers for smooth operations. Though AI is likely to reduce dependence on so many staffers, still support teams need to be adequately staffed for smooth operations.