No tangible impact of Flipkart episode on e-commerce hiring

Increasing internet penetration, acceptance of online and mobile payments and favourable demographics helping more users buy online

Flipkart might have sent some shivers down the spine of jobseekers with its deferment of on-boarding graduates of elite management institutes but India's tryst with e-commerce as large scale employer is far from over. India's e-commerce sector is still growing as more people shop online for convenience and e-commerce marketplaces and portals focusing on improving experience of customers shopping from them.

Industry body Assocham expects India's e-commerce sector to grow 67% to $38 billion in 2016, as increasing internet penetration, acceptance of online and mobile payments and favourable demographics help more users buy online. The growth will also be backed by the sector employing around 250,000 people this year, it said.

Manpower firm TeamLease, which works with e-commerce firms such as Amazon, in a recent employment outlook expects overall hiring by firms across sectors to grow at 4%, while e-commerce and technology startups is expected to see 23.6% growth in jobs between April and September 2016.

"It is a new line of business, and now that investors are more careful and access to funds is not that easy, there is more diligence in the market," says Kunal Sen, Senior Vice President, TeamLease Services. 

Sen says the industry would see cycles but the opportunity for growth is enormous. 

As these firms build the technology platform to enable more people come online, they also would hire on their own or have allied vendors such as TeamLease or Quess Corp to hire people across logistics and customer satisfaction. Quess Corp has over 12,000 people on its rolls to service e-commerce firms.

"Even if the large companies slow down on hiring, there are more number of sellers are being added on e-commerce platform. As they grow business, they need people to help them in their growth," says an executive of an large e-commerce firm, who did not want to be named."In effect, there will be more jobs."

According to the India Mobile Talent 2016 Report released by Belong, developers employed in e-commerce firms enjoy twice the salary and monetary benefits in comparison to their counterparts in the IT services and software companies across India.

Ambareesh Murthy, founder of Pepperfry.com, a furniture and home solutions e-tailer, said that as such e-commerce would continue to hire.

"We at pepperfry have plans to hire into our technology team, especially for mobile app development, java among others," he said adding that as an organisation they have a long range plan when it comes to hiring so that never under-hire or over-hire. Pepperfry, in fact, would double its headcount in its tech team in around a year's time.

Murthy also felt that e-commerce in India has evolved as an industry to reckon with, and in the next few years the turnover is expected to cross $50 billion. This obviously means there would be gainful employment, and job creation in the entire ecosystem.

According to Narayanan Ramaswamy, partner at KPMG in India e-commerce is at the same juncture in India where IT was around 20-years back. "Not everyone who went to IT succeeded, and the case is nothing different in e-commerce. There is definitely a signal for change in the marketplace," he added.