Bengaluru/Mumbai/New Delhi: The upcoming festive season is likely to spark a scramble for gig workers as quick commerce firms like Zepto and Blinkit to online retailers Meesho and Amazon anticipate a spike in demand for an assortment of goods.
These companies are likely to hire up to 20% more during the August to December festive season than they did last year, expecting more buyers for everything from mobile phones and washing machines to trendy apparel, staffing firms said.
Consumer durables, fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) and BFSI (banking, financial services, and insurance) sectors are also expected to boost hiring, although at a slower pace, as muted pay hikes during the recent appraisals may keep customers from making big-ticket purchases like a car or high-end electronic appliances that are typically financed through bank loans.
“We have 38,000 mandates from clients as of now, and expect it to reach 42,000 by the Independence Day weekend. The quick commerce and e-commerce hiring this year is estimated to be 15-20% more than last year in both temporary and gig worker space,” Lohit Bhatia, president of workforce management at staffing company Quess Corp, said.
Rival Adecco sees this rise in demand for manpower as “reasonable “.
“We are estimating a 20-30% increase in festive hiring based on our discussions with our clients in e-commerce, logistics, consumer products, and this is also snowballing into BFSI, particularly credit card and bank assurance sales,” said Sunil Chemmankotil, country manager for Adecco India.
Peak recruitment season
The festive season, which kicks off on Raksha Bandhan or 15 August (India’s Independence Day), whichever is earlier, is the peak recruitment season stretching into December. The period sees pitched battles between physical stores and online platforms, as the latter vie for a larger share of sales with discounts.
The advent of quick commerce has ensured another set of player joins the battle for fleet-on-the-street workers – delivery and logistics executives. The BFSI sector also joins this seasonal war for workers to meet a higher demand for credit cards. Car purchases on bank loans, and consumer electronics goods such as TVs, and laptops through credit cards are popular.
E-commerce firm Meesho said it aims to create 250,000 seasonal job opportunities through its partnerships with third-party logistics players such as Ecom Express, Delhivery, Shadowfax and Xpressbees as well as Valmo. “Over 60% of these opportunities will be from tier-3 and tier-4 regions,” said Sourabh Pandey, general manager for fulfilment and experience at Meesho.
Fulfilment and experience in e-commerce refers to picking, packing, and shipping goods to make sure the orders are delivered to customers efficiently and safely, without delay. This is important for customers to make repeat purchases on online platforms.
Temporary or gig
Hiring during the festive season is split between temporary and gig workers. The former are recruited by staffing firms, earning ₹1,600-2,200 a day, besides getting statutory benefits like provident fund. They are on the payrolls of the staffing firms. By contrast, gig workers are hired, often for just those few days when the demand is high, directly by a client for ₹500-900 a day without any additional benefits.
While e-commerce companies recruit gig workers in large numbers, BFSI, consumer durable firms and retail chains that deal with customer data in large volumes depend on staffing firms for temp workers.
“Early indicators say that hiring will go up, but it is sector-specific. For instance, in the BFSI segment , where credit cards, loans etc shoot up during this period, recruitment is expected to be muted. We estimate a 10% rise in the July-September quarter from the previous muted six months – January-July,” said Kartik Narayan, chief executive officer for staffing at recruitment firm TeamLease Services.
Quick commerce, whose desirability and viability were both questioned at one point, has grown in popularity, with many startups operating in the space. They service orders for household essentials within minutes. Zepto, a unicorn, Zomato-owned Blinkit and Swiggy Instamart are key entities in the segment. These platforms are also expected see a spike in non-essential items like sweets, apparel, appliances, gift items, and accessories in the coming months, and need more hands to deliver orders swiftly.
Logistics firm Emiza, which offers warehousing and delivery services for consumer brands and e-commerce platforms, had 1,500 workers and increased it by about 200 last festive season. It now has 2,000 gig workers and will hire another 250-300 this festive season. “While this may not be entirely sufficient, the idea is to manage and optimize demand by rotating workers through shifts of 12 hours instead of 8 hours and starting night shifts for faster fulfilment,” said Ajay Raj, founder and chief operating officer (CEO) of Emiza.
Physical stores also optimistic
Logistics company Shadowfax has 200,000 delivery partners, and plans to increase it by 25-30% this festive season, anticipating a doubling of demand during peak hours over the next few months.
“We offer a range of incentive programmes designed to reward our riders based on their delivery performance and effort. During peak days, riders can enjoy a payout increase of 20-25%,” co-founder Praharsh Chandra said.
Meanwhile, retailers with physical stores are also optimistic that consumer spending will rebound and footfalls increase this festive season, prompting them to offer their employees incentives to keep them motivated.
Electronics retailer Vijay Sales will offer incentives to employees, largely in line with the previous years, as it expects consumers to continue spending on air-conditioners, refrigerators and washing machines. The summer saw shoppers buy more air-coolers and air-conditioners, without denting demand for other consumer electronics.
“So, we will see consumers continue to buy household appliances and electronics,” said Nilesh Gupta, managing director, Vijay Sales. During the festive season, the Mumbai-based company typically offers its sales staff ₹10,000-15,000 and ₹20,000-25,000 as incentives beyond the monthly salary, depending on categories.
Packed October
To be sure, the festive season will commence in real earnest in the first week of October with Navratri, followed by Diwali that falls on 1 November. Thus, retailers are looking at an October packed with auspicious days, and expect demand to soar.
Hiring in the retail sector is associated with how retailers expand in a given year, and not so much linked to the festive season because demand for appliances is now spread throughout the year, Gupta added. This fiscal year, Vijay Sales will add 12-15 stores in total, with plans to close the year with 150 outlets, said Gupta.
Meanwhile, some of the big e-commerce players are taking time to reveal their hiring plans.
“Usually by this time, brands and marketplaces like Amazon and Flipkart start engaging with logistics players for planning inventory and manpower requirements. But this year, the conversations have been fairly subdued,” Raj of Emiza said.
A spokesperson for Amazon India said the company creates seasonal job opportunities every year during the festive season across its fulfilment centres, sort centres, and delivery network across the country. “We will share more information over the next few weeks,” the spokesperson said.
Flipkart and Myntra did not respond to emailed queries.
