Amazon India creates over 50,000 seasonal positions for festive sale

Amazon India has created more than 50,000 seasonal positions across its network of fulfilment centres in the country this year ahead of the festive sale as the e-commerce major jousts for leadership position against rival Flipkart.

Amazon India has a network of over 50 fulfilment centres, multiple sortation centres and close to 150 delivery stations spread across the country.

"In our effort to provide a seamless shopping experience, we have enhanced our teams significantly with more than 2X the number of seasonal associates working in the Amazon fulfilment network and customer service sites compared to the last festive season... The 50,000 seasonal associates will help us in augmenting our capabilities," Amazon India Vice President (India Customer Fulfilment) Akhil Saxena told PTI.

He added that this enhancement will play an "instrumental" role in "driving an exceptional experience" during Amazon India's Great Indian Festival Sale that is slated to be held between October 10-15.

Amazon India has, throughout the year, been investing heavily in ramping up its infrastructure and delivery network.

Saxena said these seasonal positions have been created across its network of fulfilment centres, sortation centers, delivery stations and customer service sites in cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Chennai, Bengaluru, Ahmedabad, Pune and others ahead of the festive season.

He added that these recruits will join the thousands of associates to help pick, pack, ship and deliver customers' orders more efficiently.

A section of these recruits will also work with the 20 customer service sites (across 16 cities) that provide voice support for customers in vernacular languages like Kannada, Tamil and Telugu. These customer service sites support Amazon customers in India with pre and post order service through email, chat, social media and phone.

E-tailers like Amazon and Flipkart usually hire thousands of people in delivery and support roles to handle the high volume of orders during sale period.

Flipkart has also significantly expanded its infrastructure and delivery operations ahead of its Big Billion Days (BBD) sale that will be held from October 10-14 this year.

The Walmart-backed company has doubled its warehousing capacity and now has over 65 fulfilment centres and more than 60 'mother hubs' that will cater to the expected spike in demand during the festive sale. It has also onboarded about 30,000 new delivery staff over the past many weeks, including freelance workers to help with deliveries.

About 20 million people are expected to shop on various e-commerce platforms during the festive sale next month, translating into sales of around USD 3 billion for players like Amazon and Flipkart, according to a report by research firm RedSeer.

Like in offline retail, e-commerce companies see a significant jump in sales during Dussehra and Diwali. The September-November period typically generates a majority of the annual sales of these companies, which prepare months in advance for the sale event.