With the festive season around the corner, e-commerce (ecom), quick commerce (qcom) and logistics firms are ramping up hiring to meet a longer demand window. This year, festive sale activity began as early as August with Independence Day and Raksha Bandhan celebrations and is expected to run through Diwali and into the winter wedding season.
Among ecom platforms, Meesho is looking to create one of the largest seasonal job opportunities. The company aims to enable over 10 lakh jobs, including nearly 6.5 lakh across its seller network and around 3.75 lakh across the logistics ecosystem. It added that nearly 1.3 lakh sellers are expected to hire seasonal workers across packaging, manufacturing, production, warehousing and inventory management.
“The festive season is an important period for businesses across our ecosystem to scale up and prepare for increased demand. Meesho’s logistics platform Valmo, along with our third-party logistics partners, will also scale capacity, creating seasonal roles across delivery, sortation, delivery centre operations and supervisory functions,” said a company spokesperson.
Similar to Meesho, ecom giant Amazon said it has created more than 160,000 seasonal work opportunities across its pan-India operations network to support its businesses, including qcom vertical Amazon Now. The new hiring opportunities, which include direct and indirect work opportunities across 400 cities, are in picking, packing, shipping and delivery roles.
Abhinav Singh, vice-president of operations, Amazon India, APAC, Middle East, Africa and Turkiye, said, “The expanded workforce will help us strengthen our fulfilment and logistics capabilities and ensure we can handle the festive season seamlessly. Many of these associates continue their journey with Amazon beyond the festive period, while several others return year after year to work with us.”
Both Amazon and Meesho said a significant number of opportunities are in non-metro cities.
Speaking of the hiring momentum in such cities, Kartik Narayan, chief executive officer (CEO) of jobs platform Apna, said that opportunities in Tier-II and Tier-III cities now account for nearly 55 per cent of gig jobs on the platform, up from about 39 per cent two years ago.
“The growth is also much more distributed geographically. Tier-II and Tier-III cities are up around 110 per cent year-on-year, compared with about 86 per cent in metros. Demand is strongest in last-mile delivery and fulfilment. Ecom and parcel delivery remain the largest categories in smaller cities, while qcom is growing the fastest, with postings up more than 600 per cent year-on-year,” Narayan added.
According to data from TeamLease Services, festive season temporary hiring this year is expected to rise around 15-20 per cent over last year.
Balasubramanian A, senior vice-president at the company, said that employers are increasingly hiring for specialised profiles like qcom dark store associates, inventory and fulfilment coordinators, and quality check and returns management executives. “This marks a shift from the earlier ‘hiring scramble’ model to more precision-led workforce planning, where speed, productivity and customer experience are being prioritised alongside sheer headcount.”
One such firm that is hiring for specialised roles is drone-based logistics platform Skye Air. Ankit Kumar, founder and CEO of the firm, said the company expects to add close to 200 people this festive season.
“The shape of hiring says a lot about where the industry is headed. Around 150 of these are pilot roles, largely DGCA-certified remote pilots and drone technicians deployed across Himachal and Assam, where terrain and last-mile access make drone delivery not just faster but often the only practical option. The remaining roles are in hub operations, flight operations and compliance.”
Likewise, Sarthak Shah Elwadhi, co-founder of logistics firm TrucksUp, said that while the company has around 900 full-time staff members, it expects to increase its on-roll staff by 20 per cent. “The focus on hiring is on product engineering, data science, innovation in deep-tech and core operations.” On the gig side, the company currently has around 5,000 partners and aims to triple the count over the next two years.
Another logistics platform, Blue Dart, noted that it expects to create around 3,000 front-end operations roles across its network. Beena Jacob, chief human resource officer at the firm, said, “Festive season hiring is expected to be 7-8 per cent higher than last year, reflecting continued growth in ecom-led demand and higher network throughput requirements. These opportunities will primarily be in delivery operations, hub and gateway handling, sorting, and last-mile logistics to support the anticipated increase in shipment volumes.”
