E-com, logistic firms kick off festive season hiring
Having waited a little longer to assess the festive season demand, ecommerce and logistics firms have started framing their season's hiring plans. After Ecom Express, Flipkart has on Tuesday made a big announcement of helping generate over 70,000 direct and lakhs of indirect seasonal jobs.
Flipkart will be creating direct job opportunities, including delivery executives, pickers, packers and sorters, across its supply chain. Further, there will also be additional indirect jobs created at Flipkart's seller partner locations and kiranas.
The on-boarding of more than 50,000 kiranas by Flipkart for last-mile delivery will also create thousands of seasonal jobs to deliver millions of packages this season.
"By generating employment and enabling our sellers to scale their businesses during this time, we're doing our part to drive growth in the industry and the economy," said Amitesh Jha, senior vicepresident, ekart and marketplace, Flipkart.
Flipkart is undertaking training programmes for its direct hires in various aspects of the supply chain through a mix of classroom and digital training. For lakhs of seller partners, MSMEs and artisans, Flipkart provides separate training in warehouse management and packaging.
On Monday, logistics firm Ecom Express had said that it will be hiring over 30,000 people as part of its seasonal recruitment exercise for its hubs and delivery centres, among others, to meet the festive season demand. These seasonal positions have been created across the country with 75 per cent of the total hiring for beyond metros as well as cities including, Ahmedabad, Surat, Vijayawada, Chandigarh, Indore, Patna, Lucknow, Kanpur, Bhopal and Jaipur.
During the lockdown in May, Amazon had announced plans to open 70,000 seasonal jobs. “We will continue to create thousands of additional opportunities across the network to support customer demand across the country this upcoming festive season,” Amazon said. The e-com giant had created 90,000 jobs in the 2019 festive season.
Snapdeal would rely on third-party logistics partners to meet the seasonal delivery needs. "We are working in close coordination with our thirdparty logistics partners to prepare for the surge in festive orders. Our partners are in the process of augmenting their delivery capability through additional hiring and expansion of their delivery fleet to ensure timebound pick-up and delivery of our shipments," said a Snapdeal spokesperson.
According to the Indian Staffing Federation (ISF), logistics and e-commerce are the sectors still hiring in the Covid-19-hit festive season. "There has been a shift in consumerism to the digital platform from physical stores due to the pandemic. This shift will help e-commerce sales this festive season despite an overall subdued demand. However, the ecommerce firms have been waiting to see how Unlock India has been helping the demand situation. Usually, festive season hiring plans are finalised a quarter before the season itself. This time, it got delayed," said Suchita Dutta, executive director, Indian Staffing Federation.
As per ISF data, in the second half of 2018, different sectors had hired around two lakh people for temp jobs. In 2019, despite the gloom in the economy, hiring had seen a 10 to 15 per cent growth.