Why the Layoffs?

As the e-commerce has become a potential source of revenue generation and employment, organisations like Flipkart, Myntra, Amazon, Jabong etc. are defining the new domains of business avenues for people. The report ‘Future of Internet in India’ launched by the National Association of Software & Services Companies (NASSCOM) in association with Akamai Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ: AKAM), last month revealed that there are 730 million internet users in India.

Strikingly, there has been a growth of 75 per cent of internet users in rural India. Beyond these, 75 per cent of e-commerce transactions are all done through mobile network. With this, the retail business in India has taken a new turn and it has the strength to engage more and more people.

Amid this emerging expectations from India’s e-commerce sector, the laying-off of nearly 1,000 employees by the Flipkart recently is disheartening. Around the same time, the e-commerce major is expected to employ 10,000 fresh recruits for meeting its festive season sales in the coming months. As the big billion days are nearing with all the big festivals in the country, the Flipkart should have thought about the fate of thousand employees that it had removed from jobs. The Government should come up with strict employee regulation norms so that removing an employee from a job from private corporations at least meet some standards.

Else laying off people is a regular affair in many organisations wherein barely few days are also not been served. Since the overall e-commerce market in India is valued at $17 billion in 2016, so organisations like Flipkart must see that its employees have a safe tenure as laying off huge number of employees give a bad name to the company in the market. Internet has made us global citizens and the news spread pretty fast in this age. Henceforth, Flipkart which has almost become a household name across the country today, should restraint itself from the old game of hire and fire which is so typically attached to corporate houses.