A crunch of leadership talent is pushing salaries in the startup space skyhigh, with headhunters and companies talking in terms of multi-crore packages that include a major portion in stocks.

Headhunters such as EMA Partners, Korn Ferry, Hunt Partners, Transearch India and GlobalHunt India are struggling to find the right match for about 20 mandates for leadership positions in ecommerce and startup companies, said industry executives.

“Salaries for top talent at startups have doubled and in some cases even trebled in the last 18 months,” said Sunit Mehra, founder and managing partner, Hunt Partners. Most of these salaries that have gone up from Rs 70 lakh to Rs 1.5 crore to Rs 2-4 crore were pushed up by the cash component alone, he said.

In one such recent appointment, InMobi in August hired an executive in a director-level position from a leading American technology multinational. Other examples include Snapdeal picking up the head of technology from a California-based computer software company, Paytm hiring a former Amazon India executive to head one of its business units and Flipkart hiring from a leading US-based technology major for a leadership position.