Walmart-owned e-commerce major Flipkart said it will create one lakh seasonal jobs ahead of the festive season this year. The festive season, typically around October, is also when the e-commerce company runs its annual flagship sale event, The Big Billion Days (TBBD).
Seasonal jobs are generally recurring in nature and companies hire individuals during a particular time only to meet increased demand for their services. The festive season, which is usually a series of sales between September and November, is of particular importance as it accounts for about 50 percent of the Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) for e-commerce companies.
Last year, the total GMV for the companies was around $12 billion, of which about $6 billion came only during the festive season, Redseer analysts had said.
“The complexity and scale during TBBD require us to scale up for capacity, storage, placement, sorting, packaging, human resources, training, delivery, and the entire supply chain, and this scale is always unprecedented,” said Hemant Badri, SVP and Head of Supply Chain, Customer Experience, and ReCommerce, Flipkart Group.
The Bengaluru-based e-commerce major said the planned job creation will be spread across divisions like supply chain, sortation centres and delivery hubs. The seasonal jobs will include local kirana delivery partners, women, persons with disabilities (PWDs) and others.
“This year, we are also creating over a lakh new job opportunities in our supply chain while also investing in skilling initiatives to deliver an elevated customer experience as we strengthen our footprint across the country. This year, we plan to deliver more than 40 percent of shipments through our Kirana delivery program,” Badri added.
The announcement comes at a time when Flipkart has been strengthening its reach in Tier 3 cities and beyond. The company said it has added more than 19 lakh square feet of space across Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Bihar, Punjab, Rajasthan, Telangana and many more states over the past years.