After listing 50k kiranas, Flipkart to hire 70k delivery executives, packers, sorters this festive season

Walmart-owned Flipkart has said that its biggest annual sale event The Big Billion Days will help create more than “70,000 direct and lakhs of indirect seasonal jobs.” The direct jobs will come up in areas including the company’s supply chain involving delivery executives, pickers, packers and sorters while the indirect jobs will be created at Flipkart’s seller partner locations and kiranas. “This will be further supplemented by job creation in ancillary industries including vendor locations, and freight partners,” Flipkart said in a statement on Tuesday. Amazon’s arch-rival Flipkart had last week announced onboarding over 50,000 kiranas ahead of the sale event that would create “thousands of seasonal jobs” to deliver customer orders.

The annual sale event for which Flipkart has to invest heavily in capacity, storage, sorting, packaging, human resources, training and delivery helps in job creation. “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 Vice-President, Ekart and Marketplace, Flipkart.

Also read: Amazon overtakes Flipkart as top online smartphone marketplace: Report

For the 70,000 direct hires, the company claimed of undertaking training programmes in different areas around supply chain such as customer service, delivery, installation and safety and sanitisation measures along with the handling of hand-held devices, PoS Machines, scanners, various mobile applications and ERPs. For sellers, Flipkart is providing training around warehouse management, packaging and more.

The annual online sale by Flipkart usually coincides with Amazon’s Great Indian Festival Sale wherein both companies offer a string of deals loaded with heavily discounted products across categories from sellers across India. Importantly, Amazon had surpassed Flipkart as the top marketplace for smartphones during the April-June quarter, according to a Counterpoint Research. The Jeff Bezos company expanded aggressively in the Rs 15,000-20,000 segment that had the maximum share to its online sales during the period, according to the report.