Back-office firms such as Hinduja Global Solutions (HGS), Aegis and others have beefed up teams at centres across India to handle the growth in customer demand during the festive sale of e-commerce firms in the country.
Global e-tailer Amazon is looking at doubling its business during the festive season, while local rival Flipkart with a war chest of over $4 billion is set to penetrate deeper and grow business three times in the period, when nearly 40% of country's retail sales are transacted. A third player Paytm Mall, backed by Chinese e-commerce firm Alibaba is also using the festive sales season to capture market share.
These e-commerce firms are also aggressively focusing on engaging with customers, depending on the expertise of the back-office firms who have worked with global customers. At least two BPO companies have confirmed their plans to add thousands customer service executives and professionals with other expertise this year.
HGS said it has added another delivery centre in Indore, which is dedicated to providing high-quality customer experience for an e-commerce giant and its end-consumers. The company has hired about 350 customer support professionals for the new centre since July is expected to have a workforce of more than 800 Hindi and English-speaking undergraduates and graduates from the city and nearby towns by the end of this year.
"This is aligned with our strategy to create tangible differentiators to help make our clients more competitive across customer experience functions. We are excited to expand our presence in Indore as its rich talent provides a great potential for scale and complements our expertise in delivering higher value to clients," said Partha DeSarkar, Global CEO, HGS.
More than 40% of the growth is expected to be driven by e-commerce, digital wallets and other new-age companies and a good portion of the new talent will be deployed for such clients, said Sandip Sen, Global CEO, Aegis Ltd.
Aegis plans to hire nearly 5,000 people this year to cater to the increasing demand for premium business from e-commerce, new-age and telecom companies.
Aegis currently has about 25,000 employees across and 80% of them cater to domestic clients as of now.
"About 4,000-5,000 people will be added this year. Domestic premium business as opposed domestic mass business is growing. While 40-45% of the growth will come in from the new age companies, 20-25% of the growth is expected to come from premium businesses of telecom companies and the rest will be from financial services," said Sen.
Aegis has also seen a faster growth in resources in Malaysia after India with increased demand from taxi service operators and e-commerce companies.