More than 500,000 Job Opportunities with Meesho for upcoming Festive Season

Meesho, a Soft Bank-backed e-commerce firm, announced that it would create nearly 5 lakh seasonal job opportunities within its seller and logistics network to meet rising demand during the upcoming holiday season. This represents a 50% increase over Meesho’s seasonal job creation last year.

Meesho‘s partnership with third-party logistics players such as Ecom Express, DTDC, Elastic Run, Loadshare, Delhivery, Shadowfax, and Xpressbees aims to create approximately 2 lakh job opportunities. More than 60% of these opportunities will come from Tier III and Tier IV regions. First-mile and delivery associates will be primarily responsible for tasks such as delivery picking, sorting, loading, unloading, and return inspections.

“We anticipate a significant increase in demand during the holiday season,” said Sourabh Pandey, chief experience officer, Fulfilment and Experience.

The creation of these opportunities is aimed at improving the overall customer experience during the holiday season and empowering a large number of small businesses.

Furthermore, Meesho sellers are expected to hire over 3 lakh seasonal workers as part of their holiday preparations. These seasonal workers will help Meesho’s sellers meet rising customer demand in a variety of capacities, including manufacturing, packaging, and sorting. Furthermore, more than 80% of Meesho’s sellers plan to introduce new products and expand into new categories such as fashion accessories and holiday decor. More than 30% of Meesho’s sellers are renting additional inventory storage space to ensure they are well-prepared for the increased demand.

“The festive season will see phenomenal growth opportunities driven by Tier-III+ regions,” said Abhishek Bansal, co-founder and CEO of Shadowfax.

Some of the most underserved markets have transformed into dense seller clusters. Shadowfax has invested in large pick-up centres in cities such as Lucknow, Surat, Ludhiana, and Sagar in the last year.

Meesho is also a significant player in India’s third-party logistics (3PL) ecosystem, with ambitious plans to more than double its 3PL shipments to over 1.2 billion in FY23.

According to the staffing solutions company TeamLease, as e-commerce companies prepare to meet high demand during the upcoming festive season, India is likely to see 500,000 new jobs for gig workers. There were approximately 200,000 open positions for gig workers in the country, primarily in last-mile delivery and warehouse operations. This figure is expected to rise to 700,000 by December.

TeamLease stated that this year’s holiday hiring will see a remarkable 25% increase in gig jobs compared to the same period last year, reflecting the sector’s optimistic outlook and aspirations to boost positive sentiments.

Surprisingly, warehousing operations, last-mile delivery personnel, and call centre operators are in higher demand in Tier-II and Tier-III cities than in Tier-I cities such as Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai, and Hyderabad.

As per a report, e-commerce retailers are expected to make Rs.90,000 crore in sales this festive season, up 18-20% from last year.