How to get a growth or marketing job at an Indian startup

"Growth" at an Indian startup can mean four different jobs. Knowing which one you're applying for is most of the battle.

The four growth jobs

1. Performance marketing — running paid acquisition on Meta, Google, affiliates and app networks, owning CAC and ROAS. Most common at consumer startups.
2. Content and SEO — writing, editing and structuring content that ranks and converts. Increasingly "AEO/GEO" too: getting the company cited by AI assistants. Razorpay's "Manager, AEO" posting is an example of the new shape of this role.
3. Product growth / lifecycle — onboarding, activation, retention, referral loops, notifications. Sits between product and marketing; needs SQL and experiment design.
4. Brand and communications — positioning, campaigns, PR, social. More common at later stages.

What the interview tests

Expect a take-home that mirrors the job: a channel plan with a budget, a content brief, an activation-funnel analysis, or a campaign teardown. Be ready to talk about a number you moved and how you know it was you. Vanity metrics (impressions, followers) without downstream impact are the fastest way to lose a growth interview.

Skills that transfer

SQL, basic statistics (enough to know when an A/B test is done), spreadsheet modelling, and writing. Tool experience (Mixpanel, Amplitude, CleverTap, MoEngage, Webflow, Ahrefs) is useful but learnable in a week; judgement isn't.

Pay

Growth pay tracks the revenue you're close to: performance marketers at consumer companies and product-growth people at SaaS companies are paid closest to product managers; content and brand roles are paid closer to ops. Ranges are stated on featured roles on the board.

Roles right now

Open growth and marketing roles are listed beside this article; city pages filter by "Growth & marketing".