How to Get a Startup Job in India: Naukri vs Instahyre vs Cutshort, and What Works

Use the portals to see who is hiring, then write a short, specific email to the founder of each startup that fits you. At a small Indian startup the founder usually makes the call, and many roles are filled before they ever reach a portal.

That is the short version. Below is a fair look at each portal, why startups hire the way they do, what happened when 409 people in India wrote to founders through Backdoor, and how to write the email.

The portals, one by one

Each of these is good at something. The question is who reads you, and whether that person decides.

Naukri

India's biggest job portal. It has the most listings and recruiters in one place, across every industry, and recruiters can find you in its resume database without you applying. Searching and applying are free. Paid boosts cost extra: Priority Applicant is listed at ₹617 for 3 months, Resume Display at ₹1,335 for 3 months, and the Expert Power Profile rewrite starts at ₹1,999. Naukri's own page for that rewrite says it does not guarantee recruiter calls or interviews.

Who reads you: recruiters and HR teams searching by keyword. Good for breadth. Less useful when the person hiring is a founder who never opens Naukri. Naukri alternatives.

Instahyre

A matching platform that shows you a short list of roles instead of every posting. Companies are verified, recruiters cannot send mass emails, and mid and large tech companies source from it. It is free for candidates; employers pay.

Who reads you: recruiters at companies that pay Instahyre. Good if you are a mid-level engineer who wants bigger companies to find you without spam. Instahyre alternatives.

Cutshort

Built for tech, product and design roles in India. You upload a resume, its matching puts you on companies' lists, and you can chat with the recruiter or hiring manager inside the app. Free for candidates; companies pay a yearly subscription or a share of the hire's CTC.

Who reads you: recruiters and sometimes hiring managers at companies hiring on Cutshort. App Store reviewers complain that many "interests" feel automated. Cutshort alternatives.

Wellfound

The startup job board that was AngelList Talent. Listings show salary and equity before you apply, and startups can message you first. Free for candidates. An application the company does not act on expires after two weeks.

Who reads you: often the founder or hiring manager, once you apply to a posted role. The best of the boards for startups, but only for roles that have been posted. Wellfound alternatives.

Internshala

The largest pool of internships and fresher jobs in India, free to apply, owned by upGrad since February 2026. It also sells courses with placement help, such as a Data Science course listed at ₹3,499, whose FAQ says it does not guarantee a job.

Who reads you: employers and HR teams posting internships. Start here if you are a student. Internshala alternatives.

foundit

The portal that was Monster India. Free to apply, with paid Featured Profile boosts from ₹699 plus GST for 2 months. One account covers India, the Gulf and Southeast Asia. Useful as a second portal after Naukri. foundit alternatives.

LinkedIn Premium and Easy Apply

Easy Apply sends your profile to the job poster in one click, which makes it easy for everyone else too. Premium Career adds 5 InMails a month and applicant insights, and renews until you cancel. LinkedIn Premium alternatives and Easy Apply alternatives.

For a ranked list, see the best startup job sites in India.

Why Indian startups hire before they post

This part is reasoning, not a study. It comes from how small companies work.

A startup with 15 people has no hiring team. The founder is also doing sales, product and investor calls. When they need someone, they usually do it in this order:

1. Ask their network: investors, ex-colleagues, other founders, people already in their inbox.
2. Talk to anyone good who shows up in that window.
3. Post on a portal only if nobody does.

So the role often lives in the founder's head for weeks before a listing appears, and sometimes the listing never appears because someone walked in first. When a listing does go up, it can pull hundreds of applications, and the founder reads them between other jobs.

The moments to watch are a funding round, a launch, or a founder posting that they are growing. That is when they need people and have not yet written the job post.

What happened when people in India wrote to founders

From May 15 to October 15, 2026, Backdoor sent first emails to startup founders for people who text it. Here is the India cut, by the sender's +91 phone number:

• 409 people in India had first emails sent for them, 9,600+ first emails in all.
• 136 of the 409 heard back from a founder, about 1 in 3.
• 125 of those 136 heard back within two weeks of their first email, about 9 in 10.
• 21 people kept Backdoor sending for three weeks or more. 14 of those 21 heard back, 2 in 3.

The number who heard back is a floor: reply capture dropped some replies in July 2026, so the real share is at least this high. The method is on the founder reply rates research page.

Two things stand out. Most replies come fast, so two weeks tells you a lot. And the people who kept going for three weeks did much better than average. The 21 is a small group, so read it as a direction, not a precise rate.

How to write to an Indian founder

A founder reads your email between other work, so what gets read is short and about them.

Keep it under 120 words. Four parts, in this order:

1. Their news. One line: "Saw the seed round" or "Read your post on moving to UPI autopay."
2. Your proof, with a number. One or two lines on something you did that maps to what they are building. "Cut our nightly batch from 6 hours to 50 minutes" beats "strong backend skills."
3. Why them. One line on why this startup and not any startup.
4. One small ask. "Could we do a 15 minute call this week?"

Things that get an email skipped:

• "Respected Sir/Ma'am." Use their first name. Indian startup founders write like other founders: "Hi Ananya" is normal and expected.
• A resume dump. Pasting your whole CV, or attaching it with "PFA my resume" as the email, makes the founder do the work. If you attach one, the email still has to stand alone.
• Your life story. Skip the college, the CGPA and the family background unless it maps to their problem.
• "Kindly let me know if any opening is there." It asks them to search their own company for you. Ask one specific thing.
• The same email to 200 founders. They can tell.

Send it from your own Gmail, to the founder's own address where they have printed it (the company site, a launch post, their profile). Don't guess firstname@company.in and send blind. If they don't answer, follow up in the same thread a few days later with something new. Here is how to follow up when a founder does not reply, and five example founder emails by role.

What it costs to have this done for you

Doing it well takes an hour or two a day: finding startups that just raised or launched, finding the founder's real address, writing each note and tracking follow-ups.

Backdoor does that on WhatsApp. You send your LinkedIn or resume. Every morning it picks startups that fit you, finds the founder's email and drafts a note in the shape above. Nothing goes out until you reply SEND, it sends from your own Gmail, and it follows up in the same thread until the founder answers.

In India it is sold as passes, paid once, and nothing renews:

On a 30 or 90-day pass there is a reply guarantee: if 50 first emails go out and no founder has replied by the time the pass is ending, it runs 30 days longer. More on pricing.

Whether you use a tool or do it by hand, the method is the same. Use the portals to see who is hiring. Then write to the founder, and give it a few weeks.