BENGALURU: E-commerce companies in India have actively hired during the pandemic in order to cater to the demand as the COVID-19 accelerated online shopping. According to an analysis by Nasscom research, there was a 22 per cent year-on-year growth in e-commerce workforce in 2020. E-tailing giants Amazon and Flipkart hired 1.4 lakh employees for seasonal/ contractual jobs during the year especially for the festive season which witnessed sales worth $7 billion, a 35 per cent growth over the last year.
The sudden increase in demand has forced companies to drastically step up hiring across the logistics, supply chain, customer care services and engineering divisions.The research note by Nasscom stated that the demand for talent in the e-commerce industry was particularly high for skills including customer experience, python, analytical skills, information technology. City-wise, Bengaluru and Delhi emerged amongst the top 10 global cities which saw a huge demand for workforce.
There was a steady movement of workforce from Delhi and Mumbai to Bengaluru. Cities like Kolkata, Noida, Jaipur and Ahmedabad also emerged as the top hiring hotspots, according to Nasscom.2020 also witnessed both Amazon and Flipkart leasing over nearly 3 million square feet of fulfilment centres space to address supply chain-related concerns during the Covid-led lockdown. Amazon said it has increased its storage capacity by 20 per cent over the previous year with the addition of ten new centres which brings the total to 60 across 15 states.
“With the expanded network of fulfilment centers, we look forward to creating thousands of job opportunities with competitive pay. Our investment in infrastructure and technology is to provide sellers with closer access to Amazon’s fulfillment offerings, customers with faster delivery on a wider selection of products and help ancillary businesses such as packaging, transportation and logistics,” said Akhil Saxena, vice-president, customer fulfilment operations, APAC, MENA & LATAM, Amazon India.