BigBasket, Grofers to hire warehouse, delivery staff to clear backlog

Online grocery start-ups BigBasket and Grofers have launched campaigns to hire executives for their warehouses and last-mile delivery to clear backlogs and serve new orders. While Bengaluru-based BigBasket will be hiring 10,000 staff, Gurugram-based Grofers is looking to employ an additional 2,000 people from the industries which have been deeply impacted by the Covid-19 crisis such as textile, manufacturing, and services. The hiring by BigBasket will be done across 26 cities where the company delivers.

Since the nationwide lockdown to check the spread of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) was called, BigBasket has seen around 50 per cent shortage of delivery and warehouse staff, most of whom preferred to stay indoors initially because of police highhandedness and fearing for their safety. 

“With many workers staying home or going back to their villages and towns, we now require people to service this demand. This is why we are hiring delivery and warehouse personnel, and this will work two ways. We will be able to service more customers and also provide employment to those who need it the most at the moment,” said Tanuja Tewari, vice-president of Human Resources at BigBasket.

For Grofers, currently 65 per cent of its warehouse staff is operational. “To address the issue of lack of public transport for our warehouse staff, we have sought permission from authorities to start our own bus service for our workforce, wherever required.

Buses are sanitized every day and utmost hygiene standards are followed for the staff,” said Rohit Sharma, head of supply chain, Grofers. The start-up said it is collaborating with other platforms such as Zomato to get their delivery fleet on board.

BigBasket is promising attractive salaries and benefits like health insurance, assurance of safe working environment, including disinfecting and sanitizing warehouses, delivery crates, and other equipment on a regular basis, apart from the provision of gloves and masks, and regular thermal scanning. 

It has been working with cab aggregators, retailers and restaurant associations for hiring to increase delivery frequency. It has already partnered with Uber India to deliver essentials to customers at their doorsteps. In this partnership, Uber’s driver partners will help BigBasket with last-mile delivery in four cities — Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chandigarh and Noida. 

BigBasket has also shifted to cashless payments to ensure the safety of both customers and delivery executives. It also claims to have passes from government authorities to ensure that employees have safe passage. 

Currently BigBasket is fulfilling about 75,000 orders a day and is operating at 40 per cent of its capacity. “We have increased our server capacity by 50 per cent. This would enable our app/website to handle more traffic, which will help in serving more orders,” said the company.