BENGALURU: With the festive season of Diwali, Navratri and Durga Puja on the doorstep, e-commerce giants like Amazon and Walmart-owned Flipkart are on a hiring spree to strengthen last mile services and achieve high levels of customer satisfaction.
Flipkart has added 30,000 direct jobs in the supply and logistics arm, while its competitor Amazon will provide jobs to more than 50,000 people who will work as seasonal associates before the sale. Amazon will kick off the five-day ‘Great Indian Festival’ from October 10 coinciding with Flipkart’s four-day ‘Big Billion Days’.
The direct employment for Flipkart will be across supply chain, delivery and logistics, while it will add over 5 lakh indirect jobs through its seller partners. The jobs provided at Amazon will be at its 50 fulfillment centres, multiple sort centres and 150 delivery stations.
Akhil Saxena, vice-president, India Customer Fulfilment, Amazon India, said, “The 50,000 seasonal associates will help in augmenting our capabilities to serve our customers better and enable us to deliver consistently high levels of customer experience.”
Paytm Mall, the third largest competitor in India’s online retail sector, is gearing up aggressively for the festive season as well. Operated by Paytm E-commerce Pvt. Ltd, Paytm Mall will run its ‘Maha Cashback Sale’ from October 10-15. It has partnered with various brands and intends to invest about Rs 501 crore in cashback. It will offer lowest prices between 8 am and 12 pm on various products during the sale.
Earlier in October, Amazon launched the option of Amazon Pay EMI for customers who do not have credit and debit cards. It also introduced an EMI option till six months for a maximum amount of Rs 60,000.The company highlighted that a large chunk of its customer base is from smaller cities. To attract its Prime members, Amazon would open up the festive sale 12 hours earlier exclusively for them. Just days back, Amazon put in $79 million into its digital payments component Amazon Pay, while Flipkart invested around $65 million in PhonePe.