E-commerce firms to create 300,000 jobs this festive season: RedSeer

About 300,000 jobs are expected to be created by various e-commerce and logistics companies during this year's festive season, a report by RedSeer said on Tuesday.

Most of the hiring by e-commerce platforms ahead of festive season is temporary and done ahead of time to prepare for surge in orders during the various sale periods.

However, about 20 per cent of these temporary workers are not let go at the end of festive season, RedSeer said.

About 70 per cent of these three lakh jobs are expected to be offered by online platforms like Amazon and Flipkart, while the remaining will be by logistics players like Ecomm Express and others, the report noted.

Also, 60 per cent of these roles are expected to be in logistics functions, while the rest may come up in warehousing (20 per cent) and customer service (20 per cent) functions, it added.

E-commerce companies see a large chunk of their business coming in during the festive sales and they make significant investments ahead of time to ramp up their capacity to be able to handle the spike in orders.

Festive season sees players holding multiple sale events, timed around Dussehra and Diwali.

Electronics, fashion and home furnishing are some of the categories that see a huge demand during the festive season.

RedSeer said the daily average e-commerce shipments during festive days is expected to see 1.8X jump to 22 million in daily shipments as compared to last year.

"We expect the total shipments during festive sales for the first event to grow 60 per cent y-o-y (year-on-year) over CY2019 (calendar year) to reach 150 million," the report said.

It added that the rise of tier II+ shoppers will drive an increase of shipments in Bharat as the purchase value of Bharat consumers will be lower than metro/tier I counterparts.

Value-focussed e-commerce marketplace, Snapdeal on Tuesday said its first sale starts mid-October and will coincide with Navratri festivities.

The next two sales will run in late October and early November, it said in a statement.

"Over the last many months, Snapdeal has on-boarded more than 75,000 new sellers who are sharply focused on the fast-growing value-merchandise segment. It has also added nearly 5,000 manufacturer-sellers on its platform this year," it added.

Most of these manufacturers produce and sell popular products including kitchenware, kitchen appliances, home furnishing, home improvement products, fashion apparel including sarees, kurtis, suits and kids wear and fashion accessories like watches and wallets etc, Snapdeal said.

In the run-up to Diwali, Snapdeal has also added eight new logistics centres to its network across manufacturing hubs, including Mathura, Noida and Mumbai.