India e-commerce firms ramp up hiring of delivery workers for shopping season

Teamlease Services

23/08/2022 05:41

By Tanvi Mehta and Nandan Mandayam
    BENGALURU, Aug 23 (Reuters) - India's e-commerce companies
are adding delivery personnel at a rapid pace, fearing a labour
shortage might cause them to lose out in one of the biggest
annual shopping seasons that begins in earnest next month.
    The moves come amid a tightening job market - India's
unemployment rate fell below 7% in July for the first time since
January - and persistently high inflation, complicating the
outlook for the industry which has long battled chronically high
employee turnover.  urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL1N2ZO0RC
    "Overall demand for the gig workforce has seen a sharp
increase and that is not completely supported by the increase in
pool size of delivery people... It is not a free flowing pool,"
TK Balakumar, chief operating officer at online grocery seller
BigBasket, told Reuters.
    The company, backed by the Tata group conglomerate, has
ramped up the number of delivery partners in its instant
delivery segment BB Now to 2,200 in the quarter ended June, from
just 500 in the March quarter. It aims to further raise the
number to about 6,000 by March 2023.
    BigBasket and other e-commerce firms such as Dunzo have
their own personnel for delivery, while others such as
cosmetics-to-fashion retailer Nykaa  FSNE.NS  rely on third
parties for providing the service.
    Gig work employment, of which delivery workers and
salespersons form a large chunk, is expected to reach 9.9
million in India in 2022-23, up about 45% from 2019-20,
according to a report in June by think tank NITI Aayog.
    "People... look at a delivery job as a job in transit, they
move off to something else, you'll always have shortages and
then in cases where there is a specific event or festival,
there's definitely a challenge that the delivery requirement
goes up," said Sekhar Garisa, strategy chief at business
services provider Quess Corp  QUEC.NS .
    Companies like Quess and TeamLease  TLSV.NS  act as
middlemen between e-commerce firms and job seekers in Tier 2 and
Tier 3 cities in the country.
    Some firms were optimistic the labour crunch situation will
get better.
    "There's a constant churn and movement that has existed for
4-5 years. It can cause a temporary crunch but we don't think it
is a long term thing because supply and demand will match,"
Kabeer Biswas, chief executive officer at Dunzo, told Reuters.
    Backed by Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance
 RELI.NS , Dunzo currently has 75,000 delivery partners.

 (Reporting by Tanvi Mehta and Nandan Mandayam in Bengaluru;
Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)
 ((tanvi.mehta@thomsonreuters.com; https://twitter.com/TanviMehta710;))