It took Deepu Raina five long years to realise the professional blunder she had committed by flagging off her career with a startup. “I regret every moment of it,” rues the 27-year-old, who “wasted” five years of her life working in a Gurgaon-based ecommerce firm.Initially — the first three-and-a-half years — everything was picture-perfect. Salaries were credited on time, work culture was fun and exciting, quite unlike the “boring” traditional sectors where some of her friends were working, and there was enough time for oneself, recalls Raina.Then, suddenly things started going wrong from the second half of 2014. Salaries were delayed, initially by a few days, then weeks and finally things came to such a pass that her last salary was delayed by two months last year. “I was under tremendous stress,” she recounts. “My personal life and career suffered.”Raina says that it was not just salary delays and pay cuts that demoralised her and stressed her out to the point of burnout. Glaring absence of any employee benefits such as provident fund or medical insurance, unrealistic expectations (working on Sundays is just one instance) and a lack of organisational structure only added to the strain.“Excessively long working hours were taking a toll on my family life and health,” she says, adding that an uncertain funding environment made matters worse. “Even the founders didn’t know if the next round of funding would happen,” she adds. Ask her if she would go back to a startup — and Raina sounds livid. “It might be a golden (opportunity) for founders, not for employees,” she says. “I will never go back.”Welcome to the new — and tougher — world of startups in India. Compared with the sunshine days of 2014 and ’15, when wide-eyed investors and entrepreneurs couldn’t have enough of each other, the mood has soured in the last three to six months. As investors have tightened their purse strings and put profitability ahead of profligacy, many ventures have felt the heat.While the rough-and-tumble of working in mida startup was a given, that supercharged atmosphere has increasingly given way to stress-laden offices and employees and employers have struggled to deal with this new normal.The startup stardust that built up over the last couple of years has also worn off. As leading lights such as Flipkart, Snapdeal, Ola and Zomato have pared jobs , seen valuations fall and shut parts of their businesses, the allure of working in this ecosystem has dulled. For those already in it, keeping one’s head above water at this difficult time has become paramount.“Two years ago, it felt like the sky was the limit,” says Geeta Singh, a 25-year-old customer relations manager with a boutique travel venture in Bengaluru. “Now, I’m happy to have a job and my salary on time.” She’s seen almost her entire department leave and her employer make noncommittal noises about the future of the business.Priya Chetty-Rajagopal, executive director, leadership and board practice, RGF Executive Search India, says that executives across levels are increasingly keeping their options open as startups stutter. “They are reaching out to know what fallback options they have in case their startup careers abruptly end,” she says. “Many have already made the shift back to the safety of traditional corporate careers.” While working in a startup does teach some people to take risks, this career option may not be for everyone. “We’ve seen plenty of cases where candidates with seemingly promising corporate careers flame out when they join a startup,” she adds.As the pressure in startups has escalated, there has been a flight of talent from these fledgling ventures. Young executives are increasingly seeking out the relative safety of the old economy (or at least a job with a stable IT services company) over the uncertainty of the startup world.Suresh Raina, managing partner at Mumbai-based executive search firm Hunt Partners, says the pressure of the investors, cash burn, cutthroat competition and, above all, the survival of the fittest put a lot of pressure on executives and top managers to deliver —and deliver now.“Many candidates from traditional setups are not used to this pace, the sense of urgency and accountability and opt out,” he says. “Once the initial euphoria evaporates and reality sinks in, the focus is on relevance and contribution. And that’s where the slope starts becoming steep and the going gets tough.”Working in a startup isn’t easy. Just ask Sumit Singh, 36, who spent four years of his life in ventures such as Jabong, Zomato and MakeMyTrip, about what ails the ecosystem, and he will answer in just in one word: stress. “It’s not at all an ideal scenario to be in a startup,” says Singh, who misses his stint in Reliance Jio and regrets the decision to rejoin a startup.The funding scenario is so uncertain that nobody knows how long a job will last, he adds. “I don’t want to live with the stress of an axe hanging perennially over me,” he says. Singh has a 10-monthold baby and thinks that joining a startup now is a huge risk. “I would not like to risk the future of my family,” says the software engineer, who doesn’t have fond memories of his startup phase.Though he had got accustomed to long working hours, what made him reconsider his options was when he was asked to take a salary cut. “My life had turned very stressful,” he says, adding that there were times when he went to office at 2 am to set up servers. There was a time, says Singh, when a stint in a startup was equivalent to learning, which was missing in traditional business ventures. “But that was in the past. One has to live in the present and think of the future,” he says.Until recently, getting a job in a VC-funded startup was a cool career move for many Indians, who traditionally preferred the safety of government and then stable private-sector jobs. Corporate executives ventured from their cosy cubicles to try their luck in the freewheeling world of startups and initially enjoyed the organised chaos. However, as the funding tap turned off and growth began to slow, many of them began to question these moves.“I moved from a stable Swiss construction equipment maker to an online platform for this kind of gear primarily because of a tempting pay packet and what appeared to be a better role,” says 26-year-old Mohit Gaba. “However, it quickly became apparent that there were few processes in place and we were constantly battling to meet impossible targets.” His startup dream barely lasted eight months and before he could even settle in, he and his team found themselves axed. “The thrill of working with a startup was quickly replaced with endless hours, hazy targets and micromanaging bosses,” he adds.As the pressure has piled up, employees have wilted. Across startups of all sizes, people are struggling to cope with this new pressure and are showing signs of strain. Long hours at work — and barely any time off — have meant that employees have neglected their health.Doctors ET Magazine spoke to said employees working at these startups turned up with a litany of physical and mental complaints, from simple flu and associated headache, to fluctuating blood pressure and sugar levels, skyrocketing cholesterol levels and growing incidence of cardiac ailments in executives even in their mid and late 20s.Their minds too are under massive strain, and startup employees are turning up more often at offices of mental healthcare professionals for help. Dr Alvin Alva, cofounder, Type a Thought, a Mumbai-based online counselling and emotional wellness venture, says his clinic has seen a sudden spike in the number of startup employees coming for online counselling.“We deal with over 10 cases of work-related stress from startup employees every day and this number has recently gone up,” he says. “Most report anxiety issues due to sudden layoffs at startups and job insecurity. Also, work-life balance remains largely impeded when one is under constant pressure to perform.”For many, the startup dream is fast turning into a nightmare. Added responsibilities, neverending to-do lists and constant pressure stress employees who become less self-confident. Long working hours and sudden deadlines just add to the crunch. Apart from job insecurity and disruption of work-life balance, work politics, future of startup and low pay are some of the other issues reported by startup employees.The symptoms of stressed startup individuals are self-doubt, anxiety, low confidence, depression and sometimes generalised body pain and hopelessness. Puneet Manuja, cofounder of YourDOST, a Bengalurubased emotional wellness coach that connects users with psychologists, career coaches, life coaches and counsellors, has also observed a similar spike. “Over the past 18 months, there has been a herd mentality in starting up or joining a startup,” he says.“However, there is a disconnect between the expectations and the reality of the startup world.” This is only pushing stress levels up.As the former marketing chief for the much-lauded and then much-hated Housing.com, Pratik Seal knows a thing or two about riding the startup wave. After all, his former employer reached giddy highs, attracting funding led by SoftBank, only for CEO Rahul Yadav to walk away from the venture he founded with a dozen other IIT classmates.For sure, the good days were great. “Working on the brand was a wonderful experience,” says Seal, who joined Housing as chief marketing officer in October 2014 and quit the startup last September. It was an exciting journey to build the marketing engine, develop the brand and amplify the proposition to consumers, says Seal, adding that while the growth was phenomenal, there was a caveat. “Pace is the key attribute for any startup. And therein lies a big challenge,” he says.Seal, chief marketing officer at AGS Transact Technologies, takes a dig at a section of entrepreneurs running the show in the startup world. “In their endeavour to make their mark, with insane scaling-up, acquisition of consumers and the rush to raise more monies, the entire startup scene has turned into a big Ponzi,” he says. “Rash decisions, numerous pivots, reckless hiring and subsequent firing, unclear business plans are due to lack of experience and unrealistic goals set up by entrepreneurs.”Startups, he says, need to adopt a more balanced approach to growth with mature decision-making capabilities. Personally, he thinks you need to be willing to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty running the business. “I’d rather be a Sehwag than a Dravid,” he adds. “The hands-on guy rather than a manager.”Kanika Chutani, 31, wasn’t even looking to work in a startup when she was approached by a fledgling online grocery service to be part of its communications and marketing team. After some due diligence of her own, she accepted the offer and quickly got cracking, with a seemingly endless number of meetings and calls, with overbearing bosses always peering over her shoulder.“You expect some chaos when you move to a startup,” she admits. But, for months on end, she says her former employer was stretching people and resources to breaking point. “The promoters were hazy about fundraising plans, cash in the bank and targets for the coming quarters and years,” she claims. “This meant we were always stressed about meeting what were probably phantom targets and constantly had senior management breathing down our backs.”After eight months of joining this struggling venture (she claims the firm has downsized and relocated to a smaller and cheaper office), Chutani left the online grocer to work in a large advertising agency, disillusioned with her startup stint. “Promoters build an illusion for you when they are trying to hire you, but the reality is very different,” she adds.As the startup winter only gets bleaker and ventures stockpile their limited funds for the long haul, it may be a very stressful second half of the year for people employed by these firms.