News: Grofers to add 5,000 more employees amid lockdown

Talent Acquisition

Grofers to add 5,000 more employees amid lockdown

Online grocery and e-commerce companies are experiencing a surge in demand due to nation-wide lockdown.
Grofers to add 5,000 more employees amid lockdown

Online grocery platform Grofers is looking at hiring 5,000 employees to ramp up its capacity to meet the spike in orders amid the nationwide lockdown.

Outlining the steps taken by the company over the last three weeks, its co-founder and CEO Albinder Dhindsa said the Grofers app is seeing over 1.5 million people trying to order daily.

"Everyday our app is seeing over 1.5 million people trying to order. Given the constraints on how many people we can cater to, we are only able to serve 1 out of 8 customers today...(we) are working on adding more capacity to make this work for more people," he said in the company blog dated April 7.

E-commerce companies have struggled to deliver orders after the 21-day lockdown was imposed on March 24.

The surge in orders also disrupted operations for these companies. Players have now started resuming operations across various cities, clearing pending orders before accepting new ones.

"...we have resumed operations in 24 cities and our warehouses are working at 70 percent strength...An additional 2,000 people were hired from industries that were deeply impacted by the current crisis such as textile, manufacturing, and services and would have otherwise faced income losses," Dhindsa said.

He added that the company now plans to hire 5,000 more over the next two weeks. Grofers' rival, BigBasket had last week said it is looking at hiring 10,000 people for its warehouses and last-mile delivery.

The online grocers and pharmacies BigBasket, MedLife, Grofers and Starquik have up their hiring game to fulfill deliveries of essential items as the demand has seen an unprecedented spike.

Earlier Grofers is looking to hire an existing idle semi-skilled workforce and BigBasket is looking to offer jobs to those laid off due to the COVID-19 lockdown. BigBasket has also partnered with the NRAI and Retail Association of India to offer jobs to those laid off due to the lockdown.

For e-grocers and e-commerce firms including Amazon, Flipkart, Jumbotail and Dunzo, hiring on-ground staff has been the biggest challenge after migrant workers fled to their native places from various states due to the ongoing lockdown.

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Topics: Talent Acquisition, #COVID-19

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