Flipkart To Hire 70,000 For The Upcoming Sale Season

Flipkart, the Walmart-owned e-tailer, has once again made the headlines by announcing as many as 70,000 jobs ahead of the festive season. The e-commerce giant is preparing for its upcoming festive season sale, which attracts most of the customer traffic during a year.

The announcement comes a day after its arch-rival Amazon, who is also preparing for the season, announced nearly 100,000 jobs in Canada and the US.  

These jobs announced by Flipkart span across both direct as well as indirect employment opportunities. While some will be roped into work as delivery executives, pickers, packers and sorters, others will have to work along-side Flipkart's seller partner locations and kiranas. 

 “This will be further supplemented by job creation in ancillary industries including vendor locations, and freight partners, as the entire ecosystem scales up for the festive season”, clarifies Amitesh Jha the senior vice-president of Ekart and Marketplace at Flipkart. 

The move is likely to come as a respite against the soaring unemployment rates in India catapulted during the pandemic, which stirred the economy with job losses, pay cuts, and freeze on hiring. In the week ending on August 16, India's overall unemployment rate escalated to 9.1% as compared to 8.67% in the previous week, re-instating that the ripples of unemployment continue to grow bigger. With most of the sectors shaken by the coronavirus, the situation is grim in rural as well as urban areas.

Training In Line

Flipkart has tightened its belt for the sale-season and is currently undertaking several training programmes for direct hiring in various points across the supply chain. These training sessions are a mix of classroom as well as digital lessons and will cover aspects such as customer service, delivery, installation and safety, and sanitisation measures. The handling of hand-held devices, PoS Machines, scanners, various mobile applications and ERPs have also been included in the sessions.

“As a front runner in e-commerce, our training and investment in the workforce is widely recognised, and contributes to skill development and enhances employability,” boasts Jha.  

A separate training in warehouse management, packaging and more is also being organised for seller partners, micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) and artisans, in line with the government's National Skill Development Mission.