Hiring temps during festive season up 20%

BENGALURU: Festive season hiring has seen the creation of more than 3 lakh jobs, according to estimates by temporary hiring firms. This is significantly higher than last year when the hiring is estimated to have been about 2.5 lakh or less. Flipkart said they are hiring 30,000 temporary workers, and Amazon 50,000. Many other retailers and e-commerce & delivery firms are also roping in temps to help meet the expected boom in business.

Swiggy, Foodpanda, Big Bazaar, Paytm and MobiKwik are among those who are said to have stepped up temp hiring sharply. In the past five weeks, Foodpanda hired 60,000 delivery partners, bringing the total strength to 1.25 lakh across India.

Recruitment firm TeamLease said there is a three-month preparation phase before the festive season, and players ramped up hiring by 45% in segments such as warehousing, fulfilment, technology and last-mile delivery. “We are working with Flipkart, and you realise that with the Big Billion Day Sale (across Oct 10-15) and promises like same-day delivery, the labour power that needs to be in place is massive,” said Shiv Kumar N, head of services at TeamLease.

A spokesperson of Future Group, which manages Big Bazaar, said the company started hiring nearly a month ago. “Our temp hires will work with us till Christmas and New Year sales end,” the person said.

Payments firm MobiKwik said it is hiring 200-250 extra workers to meet the festive demand, on top of the 1,000 temp workers it already has. “For ewallets, it is very important to ramp up the merchant on-boarding process in tier-1 and -2 cities,” said Upasana Taku, co-founder, MobiKwik.

Paytm did not respond to a request for hiring numbers. But TeamLease said it has seen a drastic increase in temp hires from the payments space, in particular from e-wallets.

The temp staff supply is to a great extent met by college students and freshers. “College students on our rolls have been hired for driving, food packaging and handing out flyers. We saw 250 hires from e-commerce portals and 400 from foodtech,” said Prashant Janadri, founder of FeedMyPockets. Some are hired to stand outside shops wearing clown or animal costumes. “I work at a mall between 3pm and 11pm, and I’m in charge of the discount bins. I get Rs 350 a day. But my friend works for Uber Eats and manages to earn Rs 700 to Rs 1,300 a day,” says K Parthiban.

The development was reported by retail.economictimes.indiatimes.com

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