Why high profile exits ruling Indian e-commerce

The e-commerce sector is growing and projected to cross USD103 billion by 2020 at an impressive CAGR of 41%.  This exponential growth has enhanced the job opportunities immensely. As per the joint study by KPMG and Snapdeal, Indian e-retail and the allied sectors, like logistics, warehousing, IT/ ITeS, expected to create direct employment for around 1.45 million of workforce by 2021, a significant jump from the 23,500 jobs which existed in 2012.

Employment generation

The joint report has highlighted that e-tail expected to emerge as a destination for highly-skilled technology jobs employing nearly 0.3 million people by 2021. Besides technology, the regular corporate functions like HR, finance & accounts, administration etc. to add nearly 0.1 million workforce by 2021.

The job opportunities are just not restricted to urban cities, Indian e-commerce is generating ample opportunities in villages as well. As part of the signed Memorandum of Understanding (MoUs), the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology plans to connect e-commerce companies with its 130,000 common service centers (CSCs) to potentially create 300,000 employment opportunities.

Still all is not well???

No doubt, Indian e-commerce companies are substantially adding the human resource strength to compliment the growth that they are witnessing. The sheer example of growth is, two of the leading e-tail players have increased their combined workforce from less than 10 to 40,000+ employees, within 6-9 years of inception. In between, global e-commerce giants like Amazon entered the market and is continuously expanding the workforce to make the most out of the industry growth.

With e-commerce companies creating new age employment opportunities, there has been a paradigm shift in employee expectations. Despite all the growth aspects there has been continues news of high profile exits in Indian e-commerce space. For instance, it is raining resignations in Flipkart. Today, there has been news about Ashish Agrawal and Hari Vasudev, both senior vice presidents engineering quitting the company.  

Last week we saw, Saikiran Krishnamurthy, who headed the e-tailer supply chain unit Ekart; senior vice president Surojit Chatterjee, who headed product and chief marketing officer Samardeep Subandh leaving the organization.

Flipkart is on its way to be one of the largest e-commerce companies in India. Current valuation of the company stands at $5.54 billion compares with $15.5 billion during mid-2015(source: media reports)

Expert View..

Flipkart is not sole example such high profile exits seems to be the common phenomena in the Indian e-retail space. Speaking exclusively with indianretailer.com, Asif Upadhye, Director & Chief Fun Officer, said, Never Grow Up said,” There could be the series of facts behind such high profile exists. I won’t be surprise if it is a case of cultural alignment. ‘Money’ is not the sole reason behind people moving out, there could be numerous reasons including job satisfaction or personal reason, etc.”

He also feels that work pressure or performance cannot be attributed to such exits as high pressure jobs are everywhere. “It could be a case where you are entering a place and  not being able to align with company goals or having different growth plans,” he said.

As per the report, hiring activities in the country grew by nearly 10% in 2015, and most of the recruitment surveys have highlighted an optimistic hiring outlook by the Indian companies for 20169 . This push is expected to come mainly from the e-commerce sector, with almost all recruitment agencies highlighting aggressive hiring by e-commerce companies and reinforcing the sector’s role in leading the employment creation.