Companies engaged in the delivery of essential services continue to face hurdles — whether it is groceries, medicine or food delivery — even as demand for their services has massively increased over this period. Their primary hurdle currently amid the surge of orders is shortage of labour, with many people returning home due to coronavirus.
According to BigBasket CEO Hari Menon, the company currently requires 15,000 people for warehousing to manage the current demand.
Given the circumstances, as hiring is hard, BigBasket has entered into tie-ups with the National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI) and is also trying to get manpower through the Retail Association of India, amongst other similar 15-20 tie-ups.
“We need 15,000 people; we don’t know how many we will get. We are working on all fronts because we need these people badly — and quickly — because we are operational everywhere. The single thing we need right now is people. If we get people, we are good,” Hari Menon told TNM.
It is in places like this where either organisations like the National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI) or non-food retailers, where manpower is not being used or is barely being used, are stepping up so that people can continue to be employed.
NRAI President Anurag Katriar says that BigBasket is the only one to have approached them so far, and they are more than happy to be an interface for people in the restaurant industry looking out for opportunities at this time.
“Right now, all the restaurants are shut and people are sitting home. Online aggregators are looking for people as they are short. As NRAI, we connected with them, and we said, here is our workforce — whoever is willing to work with you, you can hire them on a daily wage system as long as our restaurants are shut. We have just become an interface between a company which needs to hire and a bulk of people who work in my industry looking for the job. We have all the intent to pay them, but we have limited means, and we don't even know how long this problem is going to last,” Anurag says.
According to reports, Grofers is also looking to hire manpower for its warehouses.
The Retailers Association of India says that 90% of the retailers in the association are non-food retailers.
Kumar Rajagopalan, the CEO of RAI, tells TNM that the idea was to help each other, as turnout in essential food companies is around 30%.
“Somebody's got quite a few people who are currently not being employed thanks to COVID-19. We know that the turnout as far as essential food companies are concerned has been about 30% because quite a few people who were from outside of the town, the immigrants have gone back. The idea was to try and help each other. And we just are a collaborative platform as far as RAI is concerned. HR reps of companies are talking to each other to make it happen,” he says.
For this, he said that they created a methodology for people transfer, to create make sure that people are safe, to make sure that people are insured.
RAI has even started a project for the same called ‘The Food Soldier’ which looks at optimising the supply chain for retailers of all sizes including kiranas, ensuring that there is adequate staff in the stores and ensuring that consumers get timely delivery of essential goods. RAI is coordinating this with the help of WhatsApp groups in various locations which have all stakeholders on them.