Logistics platform Ecom Express says it will hire 7,000 employees ahead of the festive season to keep up with the demand for online shopping

• The company plans to hire across roles and verticals including last-mile delivery, warehousing management, operations, information technology and data sciences.
  
• This is as the company prepares to deal with the surge in demand for online shopping during the festive season.
  
• The eight-year old company says that the new hires would then account for almost one-fourth of the total employees.

Logistics solution provider Ecom Express today said that it will hire 7,000 full-time employees. The tech enabled logistics startup plans to hire across roles and verticals including last-mile delivery, warehousing management, operations, information technology and data sciences.

The news comes at a time when most of the companies have halted hirings due to the economic downturn caused by the coronavirus pandemic. This is as the company prepares to deal with the surge in demand for online shopping during the festive season.

“During the last three months, due to the unprecedented covid-19 scenario, which affected every business worldwide, we too had put a temporary hiring freeze. However, with the situation easing now as well as the pent up customer demands induced by lockdown has pushed forward our hiring pace,” Saurabh Deep Singla, SVP and CHRO at the Ecom Express told Business Insider.

Founded by T.A. Krishnan, Manju Dhawan, K. Satyanarayana and Sanjeev Saxena, and headquartered in Gurugram, Ecom Express is looking to hire people across locations including the metro cities and tier II cities like Patna, Indore, Bhopal and Kanpur.

The salaries will differ depending on the role and position. The starting salary of a delivery associate would be nearly ₹ 2.4 lakh a year while for a data scientist, it can go as high as ₹30 lakh. “The salary packages can depend on a lot of factors, such as the posting location, cost of living and average market salary range for the roles in these cities — depending on the skill complexity,” said Singla.

The eight-year old company says that the new hires would then account for almost one-fourth of the total employees. It started with nearly 311 employees in 2012.

"As a provider of logistics services to the e-commerce industry, employees are paramount and a pivot to what we do. In these difficult times, we see an increase in the demand for online shopping across cities and we need to support the scale and size for doorstep deliveries. The hiring of new employees is driven by an unprecedented need to keep the supply chain running for the e-commerce industry and in ensuring safe and timely deliveries,” Singla added.

The startup has investments from UK’s development finance company CDC Group, global equity firm Warburg Pincus and Peepul Capital — and claims to have reached more than 90% of the population including tier II, III cities.

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