Amazon, Delhivery announce addition of seasonal jobs ahead of festive sales

E-commerce and logistics companies are adding more jobs as they gear up to service bulk orders in the upcoming festive season.

Amazon India on Wednesday said it has created more than 100,000 seasonal job opportunities across its operations ahead of the festive period. The fresh recruits will join the firm’s network of associates and support them to pick, pack, ship and deliver customers’ orders, the company said in a statement. Besides, the firm claims to have also generated tens of thousands of indirect opportunities through its varied partner networks.

The new job roles by Amazon are in addition to the nearly 70,000 temporary workers it hired across its operational network and customer service centre earlier this year. The announcements are in line with the company’s stated target to create one million new job opportunities in India by 2025.

Delhivery said it expects to create over 15,000 seasonal jobs across departments over the next few weeks. The company that provides logistics services to e-commerce companies, among others, is gearing up to ship 65 million to 75 million packages during the festive season, nearly 100% growth over last year.

Online firms are preparing to handle a surge in order volumes than usual during the upcoming festive sales.

The pandemic has nudged most customers to shift to online shopping. Consumers across age groups have turned to e-commerce platforms to meet their consumption needs, including essentials.

A report by consulting firm RedSeer estimates the festive season to add three lakh new jobs. In 2019, the festive period created an estimated 2-2.2 lakh jobs.

Although the job roles are primarily seasonal, about 20% of the temporary workers are usually retained at the end of the season.

The fresh employment roles will be accommodated across logistics, customer service and warehousing segments with logistics alone accounting for about 60% of the total jobs, the report said.

Delhivery said it is beefing up its last-mile delivery capacity through its various partner programmes, on-boarding individual bikers, transporters, local kiranas, and businesses.

The plan is to ramp up its partner sign-ups to more than 25,000 across India, almost double from its existing base with a revenue payout of over a Rs 100 crore just to the last-mile partners this season.

The company’s physical footprint across the country has doubled in the last one year to over 12 million sq ft, including the launch of mega trucking terminals in Bilaspur, Bhiwandi, and Bengaluru ahead of the festive season. “In line with our original plan, we will invest over Rs 300 crore on expansion in the coming 18-24 months, increasing our fleet size and setting up more mega trucking terminals,” said Sandeep Barasia, managing director and chief business officer.

Flipkart had earlier this month said it will help create more than 70,000 direct jobs in the run up to its upcoming Big Billion Days sale. The direct jobs will be in addition to lakhs of indirect seasonal employment opportunities that the company expects the festive sale event to generate.