Denying Staff Cuts, Flipkart To Hire 10,000 Temporary Employees; Gears Up For Festive Season

Online shopping platform Flipkart has reportedly denied media reports of 800 staff cuts. On the contrary, the company claims to have plans to boost up its delivery and logistics service with 10,000 temporary employees to meet the demand from the current festive season.

The move comes as part of preparations being made by ecommerce companies as they launch offers to boost sales during the upcoming festive period.

Nitin Seth, Chief Administrative Officer, Flipkart told PTI, “With the festive season coming in, we are confident that the Big Billion Day (sale) will be bigger and better than before this year. In addition to having the new capability of an alternate delivery model, we are looking at hiring more than 10,000 temporary staff in logistics and last mile across the country.”

He stated that the new hires are in line with its business goals as the company continues to hire talent in key strategic areas, and there are no plans for layoffs in any team in the coming months. “We completely and unequivocally deny any layoffs at Flipkart in the coming months,” he added.

In August 2016, in an attempt to gain employees’ confidence, Flipkart’s co-founder Sachin Bansal defended the staff cuts in a townhall meeting saying even the top leadership, including himself weren’t spared when it came to lack of performance.

With the festive season around the corner, online retailers gear up for competition to outdo each other in order to increase sales and revenue. Amazon India is planning its “Great Festive Sale” in early October while Flipkart is planning its “Big Billion Day” event.

Amazon India is going to spend 2x-3x more to advance its marketing and advertising while Flipkart is aiming for better customer experience, according to a report by ET.

Online marketplace Snapdeal is also looking towards creating 10,000 temporary jobs at the company between September 15th to November 15th, mostly in the logistics department to ensure smooth deliveries.

Flipkart has witnessed a series of ups and downs this year. In July 2016, Flipkart decided to lay off 700-1000 underperforming employees when it faced a downfall in its valuation by Morgan Stanley, T. Rowe, and others.

Earlier, in April this year, Flipkart also curbed its discount pricing and placed a cap on salary increments. It is also aiming to cut its monthly burn rate to $40 Mn from the about $80-100 Mn in the first half of 2016.

Other major layoffs seen this year include

• More than 150 CommonFloor employees were fired by Quikr after the real-estate portal was acquired by the ecommerce platform, this January.
• In April, InMobi fired close to 100 employees and Hiree fired 80% of its workforce.
• GirnarSoft-owned platforms had fired 60 employees in a bid to realign its management and resources to focus on its core areas.
• Grofers, which fired 10% of its employees in June.
• Snapdeal-backed GoJavas too suspended its operations and fired nearly 1500 of its employees.
• Ask Me shutdown its operations and gave pink slips to 4000 of its employees, vendors and others.
• Online cab aggregator Ola also reportedly fired 250 employees a week after shutting down TaxiForSure and laying off 1000 employees.