Meeting rooms at Flipkart’s office have turned into bedrooms, gaming rooms. Here’s why

A 40-member team in Flipkart, which is the first line of the battle to win the consumers, is not ready to go back to their homes due to the upcoming mega online festival sale that is about to begin.

Deepti Agarwal, Flipkart’s senior engineering manager, says that these 40 members of the team won’t go back to their homes even after Flipkart asking them to go home. These employees would just work and sleep in the office. "They just sleep in the office,” says Agarwal.

To wake them up, loud music is played every morning at the suburban office in Bengaluru. The meeting rooms have been turned to bedrooms and are stacked with pillows and mattresses. There are yoga sessions to perk up those who haven't slept a wink, gaming rooms to de-stress and food at midnight.

“It feels like an Indian wedding,” Nitin Seth, the chief people officer of Flipkart tolf ET.

Though, it seems like fun but isn’t even close to that. Flipkart, Amazon and Snapdeal will unveil a bevy of offers to lure customers as they prepare for the biggest face-off of the year, looking to garner a significant portion of their total annual sales during this burst of festive spending that will last for most of October. This is serious in an ugly way.

“Big Billion Day means three things -the scale, the detailing in terms of planning and the thrill of it all coming together. Everybody is stretching beyond their work profiles and nobody is looking at the watch,” Panchali Upadhaya, a senior director at Flipkart told ET.

Their main goal is to rack up sales and keep the lead on Amazon India, as the rival has invested Rs 130 crore in this festive season.

"The atmosphere dovetails well into our motto of work hard, have fun, make history,” said a representative for Amazon. The company's sale strategy is being directed from its office in west Bengaluru.

Certain special arrangements are made for the employees to stay close to the office at both Flipkart and Snapdeal. Saurabh Nigam, vice-president for HR at Snapdeal, wants employees to bring families to work on designated days.

“There will be monetary and non-monetary awards for top performers, all through the festive month of October. We also plan to have Diwali melas,” said Nigam.

It has been estimated by RedSeer that the amount of overall value of goods sold across all online marketplaces may not exceed Rs 10,000 crore in October this year as compared with goods worth Rs 9,000 crore sold last year.

“The message is simple -we put our best foot forward and really make it big for our customers. The fact of a worthy competition makes the game a lot more exciting,” said Flipkart's Seth, referring to Amazon India.
(image :Indiatimes)