Anish Kumar from Bihar is an employee in a private company in Delhi. He has been a regular consumer of e-commerce companies Grofers and BigBasket, which sell household consumption goods through home delivery. About a month ago, he had ordered some essential household items on Grofers, which have not yet been delivered to him due to the lockdown.

A few days ago, Anish Kumar complained on Twitter about it. Then, Grofers had cited the high demand and shortage of staff due to lockdown as the main reason. Like Anish, many such complaints are floated on social media, especially Twitter, regarding the failure of Grofers and BigBasket to make deliveries on time.

These two e-commerce companies have admitted that things are not working out for them in this time of emergency, though both the companies have assured that the glitches would be overcome soon to smoothen and restore the timely delivery of the domestic need items to the consumer. So, the two companies advertised the vacancy of about 12,000 delivery boys.

At this time of lockdown when employees in private companies face layoffs or pay cuts, this move of Grofers and BigBasket is certainly a relief. It is also a relief to the youth who are seeking employment opportunities in cities.

A representative of Grofers told Gaon Connection: “There was a sudden spurt in demand after the lockdown announcement. Although we were prepared for the situation, the number of orders that poured in was much beyond our expectation. So, we have decided to recruit more employees and delivery boys. The process has already been initiated and the recruitment of about 2000 employees has been done. They are currently undergoing training. In addition, we are also partnering with different delivery companies to address this emergency at the earliest.”

Like the Grofers, BigBasket has also advertised the recruitment of about 10,000 employees. Tanuja Tiwari, the vice president of the Human Resources Department at BigBasket, informed: “We are thinking of recruiting 10,000 people for delivery services. We are now facing a shortage of 40 per cent staff for warehousing and delivery related works.”

BigBasket is not taking any new orders right now. It is presently trying to fulfill all its pending orders. BigBasket co-founder and CEO, Hari Menon has advised against panic buying. He said: “We have adequate stock with us. The options such as ‘community-buying’ are also being looked into in order to deliver it to the people at the right time”. In ‘community buying’, people of a complex or colony give all their requirements as a single order.

Grofers has also advised its consumers to ask people living in their neighbourhoods before ordering anything and order together to meet the needs of people in a single order.

Hari Menon said: “We are getting orders in numbers that are two-and-a-half times higher than before. At present, we have more than one lakh orders pending, so we need delivery boys and delivery partners.”

He added: “We are able to provide only 60 per cent of the services as compared to our original plan. We were able to provide only 10 per cent of our capacity on March 25. But a few days into the lockdown, we started getting some support from the administration and we recruited and trained more delivery boys. Now, we are able to provide our 60 per cent services on April 6. Soon after the completion of the recruitment and training process, we will be providing our 100 per cent services.”

Menon said that BigBaskets are providing their services in almost all cities except Kochi and Indore. It is noteworthy that BigBasket operates across 26 major cities in the country. Grofers provides its services in about 27 cities in the country.

E-commerce companies coming together

In view of the difficulty in delivery BigBasket has also tied-up with Uber. The app-based taxi service company will deliver consumers their essential commodities at home. This will benefit Uber drivers who suddenly found themselves out of work due to lockdown.

Prabhjit Singh, director, Uber India and South Asia, informed: “This service will benefit the people, they will get the required goods at the right time. Our drivers will also earn. Since cab services were not allowed to operate during lockdown, the drivers associated with us did not have any source of income.”

However, this tie-up of Uber and BigBasket is only for cities like Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chandigarh and Noida. In addition, Uber has also tied up with e-commerce giant Flipkart and Spencer’s to minimize the economic losses of its drivers. Now Uber drivers will carry your essential use items to your doorstep through cab and bike. The facility will also be applicable in only three major cities of Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru.

Similarly, the bike service app company Rapido has also tied up with online shopping websites like BigBasket, Big Bazar and Spencer’s. The Rapido biker, who serves across 95 cities in the country, would now provide the things you need to your home. The representative of Rapido told through e-mail that this facility will be available in 90 cities in the country. He also said that Rapido is soon going to deal with Grofers and BigBaskets.

In fact, in this difficult time of lockdown, most e-commerce companies stand together. Amazon, BigBasket, Grofers and online medicines delivery company Medlife has released a video to show that all e-commerce companies are ready to meet the needs of the people together at this difficult time. They have named this campaign as #HumSabEkSaath.

Other e-commerce companies also have assured against layoffs

Meanwhile, US-based company Walmart has announced that it would not deduct the salary of its employees during the time of lockdown. In addition, Walmart will also hire those whom it had offered jobs before the spread of the virus.

Flipkart has also organized a town hall and assured about 6,000 regular employees that their jobs are safe. Flipkart’s CEO, Kalyan Krishnamurthy, organized an online town hall in which he assured his employees that the financial position of the company was quite safe. So, there is no need to worry about layoffs.

This assurance was, however, extended only to the regular employees of the company. The future of employees who work for these companies on contract or daily basis is still in limbo.

Only essential items available on Flipkart and Amazon

In view of the lockdown situation, Flipkart and Amazon have decided to sell only essential services and products. Therefore, all the electronic products, including smartphones, are seen less or not available on the site of these companies, which used to be the most sold items of these sites. Myntra, a subsidiary of Flipkart, which sold clothes, has also closed its services during the lockdown. Among the essential items available on Amazon and Flipkart are household consumption items, health and hygiene products, sanitizers and medical products. Similarly, pizza company Domino’s has also started delivering essential items like flour and spices in Bengaluru by entering into an agreement with ITC.