Apna has appointed industry veteran Kartik Narayan as its new CEO to drive its next phase of growth. With 20+ years of experience in staffing, telecom, and technology, Kartik will strengthen Apna’s AI-led employment platform that has already connected over six crore job seekers to seven lakh employers across 900+ cities.
Apna, India’s leading early-career job and professional networking platform, has appointed Kartik Narayan as its new Chief Executive Officer — a strategic leadership move that signals the company’s readiness for an ambitious next stage of growth in shaping the future of work. The Bengaluru-based startup, founded in 2019, has rapidly evolved into one of India’s most influential workforce platforms, connecting more than six crore job seekers to over seven lakh employers across 900 cities through its AI-led hiring ecosystem. Kartik’s appointment comes at a pivotal moment, as Apna looks to deepen its role in India’s labour economy and accelerate its mission of empowering millions through technology and scalable employment infrastructure.
With more than 20 years of experience across telecom, technology, and staffing, Kartik brings a rare blend of domain depth and execution experience. Prior to joining Apna, he served as CEO – Staffing at TeamLease Services Limited, one of India’s most prominent workforce solutions firms, where he played a transformative role in shaping the country’s skilling and employment pipelines. His time there positioned him as a central figure in the evolution of India’s organised staffing sector, combining digital maturity with policy navigation and grassroots employability efforts. He also served on the Board of the Indian Staffing Federation, influencing critical frameworks around marketing, research, and regulatory vision for the industry — experience that is likely to help Apna contribute to wider national workforce agendas.
Kartik’s professional journey spans senior roles at Vodafone Idea Limited, Cisco, Riverbed Technology, Airtel, and Sify Technologies — giving him a comprehensive understanding of enterprise behaviour, hiring patterns across sectors, and how digital transformation impacts workforce dynamics. It is precisely this intersection — where infrastructure, scale, and technology meet — that Apna now sits at. Unlike traditional job listing platforms, Apna has functioned as a vertically integrated ecosystem, enabling not just hiring, but peer communities, career progression pathways, skill discovery, and AI-optimised employer-worker matchmaking. Kartik’s background in scaling complex businesses suggests a sharpened focus on monetisation, operational efficiency, category expansion, and even deeper personalisation for both job seekers and employers.
Apna’s growth has been built on solving one of India’s largest economic challenges — bridging the gap between early-career talent and fast-growing enterprises that need them. The platform caters to a demographic previously underserved by white-collar-focused recruiting channels, helping young professionals, entry-level employees, and gig workforce participants explore verified opportunities in real time. Its AI-led engine not only simplifies access to jobs but also improves hiring speed and quality for companies across sectors such as retail, BFSI, logistics, technology, and emerging new-economy categories. The company’s ability to scale beyond metro markets to Tier-II, Tier-III, and even smaller economic clusters has repositioned it as not merely a digital platform — but a workforce infra layer for India’s next decade.
Kartik’s arrival could accelerate Apna’s evolution into an even more multifunctional platform — one that moves beyond discovery and recruitment into continuous career enablement. His prior experience with industry bodies indicates a leadership strategy that spans both public and private collaboration. Policy alignment may become a stronger play, especially as India intensifies its formalisation and digital workforce policies before 2030. Industry insiders expect sharper expansion into employer solutions, deeper AI automation, multilingual job intelligence, and stronger rural and semi-urban penetration. With digital-first hiring becoming the norm in industries ranging from quick-commerce to finance to manufacturing, Apna is positioned to standardise the future of India’s workforce engagement model.
In an era where AI-led matching, verified employer networks, and intelligent job discovery are becoming non-negotiable for economic acceleration, Kartik’s appointment represents more than an executive reshuffle — it signals readiness for scale, policy influence, and global ambition. Apna is no longer operating as just a job marketplace; it is evolving into a next-generation employment infrastructure company. Under Kartik’s leadership, the platform is expected to not only bridge gaps in India’s hiring systems but rewrite how millions build careers in the digital economy — faster, smarter, and more meaningfully than before.
