Apna Group today announced a strengthened leadership structure to drive its next phase of growth by appointing Kartik Narayan as the Chief Executive Officer of their Jobs Marketplace vertical. In this role, he will report to Nirmit Parikh, Founder and Group CEO of Apna. Prior to joining Apna Group, Kartik served as the CEO for Teamlease – Staffing business.
Mr. Narayan brings to Apna over two decades of financial and operational leadership across some of India’s most respected enterprises. Prior to joining Apna, Kartik led one of India’s largest workforce solutions businesses, where he helped expand staffing and enterprise partnerships during a period of significant transformation in the job economy. He also served as an Executive Board Member of the Indian Staffing Federation (2024–2025).
Over his 24-year career spanning TeamLease, Vodafone Idea, Cisco, and Bharti Airtel, Kartik has consistently demonstrated an ability to build and scale large, complex organizations, forge deep industry partnerships, and deliver sustainable business outcomes.
As the CEO of Apna’s Jobs Marketplace, Kartik Narayan will lead efforts to scale, strengthen employer partnerships, and accelerate the adoption of AI-powered hiring solutions Commenting on the same, Nirmit Parikh, Founder and Group CEO, Apna said: “We’re thrilled to welcome Kartik to join our growing Leadership team and lead our rapidly scaling Jobs Marketplace vertical. Kartik brings decades of leadership experience from managing large businesses in India. Together, we aim to create lasting impact – empowering millions of job seekers and lakhs of companies who rely on Apna to find and hire great talent.”
Kartik Narayan, CEO, Apna Jobs Marketplace, said: “Apna has redefined how India hires at scale. What excites me most is seeing how thousands of companies are now building and deploying their own AI recruiting agents on Apna’s platform — automating hiring conversations and finding the right candidates faster than ever before. With AI reshaping the world around us, productivity across recruiters, employers, and candidates will become the new currency of competitiveness. Our opportunity is not just to keep pace with this shift, but to lead it.”
Apna Group recently expanded its portfolio with the launch of Blue Machines, an enterprise-grade Voice AI platform, and is developing a dedicated Education vertical to prepare India’s next generation of professionals and shaping the workforce of tomorrow: human, digital, and continuously skilled.
About Apna Group
Apna Group currently operates 3 verticals: Apna.co (Job Marketplace Vertical), Blue Machines (Enterprise Voice AI Platform) and Education
About Apna.co (Job Marketplace Vertical)
Founded in 2019, Apna.co is India’s leading jobs and careers platform, dedicated to helping India’s rising workforce unlock professional networking, skilling, and livelihood opportunities. Spanning more than 40% of the country’s pincodes, Apna is on a mission to enable livelihoods for billions in India. With over 60 million users across 900+ cities and trusted by more than 700,000 employers, Apna is the destination for opportunities across 200+ job categories.
About Blue Machines (Enterprise Voice AI Platform)
Blue Machines is Apna’s enterprise Voice AI platform for production environments. It delivers low-latency, multilingual, compliant Voice AI with end-to-end observability and resilience, supported by Forward-Deployed Engineer (FDE) teams that work alongside clients to ensure rapid, reliable deployments.
