#Coronavirus: Grofers Will Hire 5000 Employees; Only 12.5% Of Orders Are Getting Delivered

As per the reports, the online grocery platform Grofers is planning to hire 5,000 employees to ramp up its capacity to meet the spike in orders amid the nationwide lockdown.

What Does Grofer Plan?

For implementing this, the company has also partnered with resident welfare associations (RWAs) of over 100 societies across metros to make essentials available to a larger number of people amid the 21-day lockdown imposed to contain the spread of COVID-19.

The grocery platform co-founder and CEO, Albinder Dhindsa said the Grofers app is seeing over 1.5 million people trying to order daily, while outlining the steps taken by the company over the last three weeks.

Further, he said, “Every day our app is seeing over 1.5 million people trying to order. Given the constraints on how many people we can cater to, we are only able to serve 1 out of 8 customers today…(we) are working on adding more capacity to make this work for more people,” in the company blog dated April 7.

Why Would This Happen?

Apparently, the E-commerce companies have struggled to deliver orders after the 21-day lockdown was imposed on March 24.

The online platforms faced hiccups initially, Even though the government allowed delivery of essential goods including food, pharmaceuticals and medical equipment through e-commerce platforms.

Also, the surge in orders also disrupted operations for these companies. 

Now, these players have started resuming operations across various cities, clearing pending orders before accepting new ones.

Dhindsa said, “…we have resumed operations in 24 cities and our warehouses are working at 70 percent strength…An additional 2,000 people were hired from industries that were deeply impacted by the current crisis such as textile, manufacturing, and services and would have otherwise faced income losses,”.

Further, he added that the company now plans to hire 5,000 more over the next two weeks. 

What About Other Vendors?

Apart from Grofers, its rival Big Basket last week informed about planning to hire 10,000 people for its warehouses and last-mile delivery.

According to Dhindsa, over the last three weeks, the company has delivered essential groceries to over one million households in 22 cities.

Further, he pointed out that organized grocery in India is really small saying “Kiranas are (rightfully) king as they provide customized service at a very local level and constitute 95 percent of Indian grocery retail… Online grocery is only about 0.2 percent of the overall retail market. I think at the end of this crisis we will probably reach 0.5 percent, but that is still an insignificant share,”.

Apart from this, the company has also collaborated with MyGate, a security and community management solution, to ensure zero-touch deliveries via the latter’s Leave At Gate feature.