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Ecomm companies like Flipkart, Zomato, and Amazon start hiring women for night shifts, ET Retail

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NEW DELHI: India’s leading ecommerce and delivery companies – Flipkart, Zomato, and Amazon – are taking the lead to recruit women in the night shift to boost diversity numbers in the blue-collar workforce.

Flipkart has been hiring women for fulfilment and sortation centres in Haryana from September 2023. Amazon India recently launched women in night shifts (WINS) initiative at one of its sorting centres in Haryana. Both ecommerce players also have women in night shifts across other states.

These companies, including others like Zomato, are looking to increase the number of women in the blue-collar workforce.

Currently, women’s participation in the overall workforce of ecommerce companies is about 10%, according to CIEL HR Services estimates. “However, this is slated to rise further going ahead. We estimate the size of the women workforce in this industry to grow by 25% in 2024,” said Aditya Mishra, chief executive, CIEL.

Challenges like social norms, transportation and safety do remain for women working the nights. But ecommerce and delivery companies are taking measures to make workplaces favourable for women at their end, company executives said. These include comprehensive training programmes covering road safety, fire safety, self-defence, prevention of sexual harassment (POSH), and gender sensitisation, providing safe transport, necessary physical infrastructure, other facilities like night canteens, constant monitoring through CCTVs. Ecommerce and logistics companies in the blue-collar space, excluding riders, would employ around 500,000 people, according to Teamlease estimates.

“Notably, in the gig economy dominated by the ecommerce and logistics sector, the hiring of women surged by over 40% in 2023 compared to the preceding year 2022,” said Kartik Narayan, CEO, staffing, Teamlease Services.

Flipkart has close to 30% women in its supply chain including in last-mile delivery roles. “Today, we have more than 800 women working in night shifts across various locations in Haryana,” Prajakta Kanaglekar, vice-president, supply chain and customer experience, Flipkart, told ET.

The night economy is opening and that holds true for multiple sectors, according to Anjalli Ravi Kumar, chief sustainability officer at Zomato. Zomato has over 2,000 female delivery partners across the country.

“While most women prefer to log in the day time, across the South women are delivering post 8 or 9 pm, too,” said Kumar. A lot of warehouse business happens at night as goods from farmers come in late evening. “So, we capitalise on the night hours,” Kumar added.

  • Published On Mar 4, 2024 at 01:35 PM IST

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