Infibeam to hire over 3,500 by 2015

Ahmadabad-based e-tailer Infibeam is hiring aggressively. With the Rs 3,600 crore industry slated to double by 2015, Infibeam is in a rush to grow its human resource four times to attend to the increasing volumes. 

"I want to have 5,000 people in our rolls by 2015," says Vishal Mehta, Infibeam founder, who has a team of 1,300 people servicing customers pan-India. He picked up seven students from Indian Institute of Management early this year for category management, finance, marketing and strategic business management roles, offering e-sops in addition to the regular packages in 2013. "With e-commerce looking promising, talent is keen to participate in the growth story with e-sops," he says. 

A recent report by Franchise India has indicated that the Rs 3,600 cr industry would swell double its size by 2015. The current hiring would create additional 1 lakh jobs by 2015. Around 1-1.2 lakh workforce currently serves this space. 

Tradus' rolls would swell to 1,000 from current 150 by 2015, Naaptol would intake additional 50 people for analystics, category management and marketing, Babyoye would double its strength to 300 by 2015, while Jabong.com would hire 350 more to have a team of 1,000 in place by 2015. Lifestyle e-tailer Myntra is hiring for technical, management and fashion-oriented roles, ET has learnt. 

"In 2012 alone, hiring was 45-50% up over previous year. With promising growth prospects, this sector will need to fortify its people infrastructure to deal with the challenges in the e-commerce space," notes Chaitanya Aggarwal, founder and CEO, Juvalia & You. Juvalia expects its current workforce of 150 to grow four times by 2015. 

With a big chunk of 137 million Indian internet users getting used to virtual shopping for apparel, accessories, books, music, jewelry, footwear, beauty and wellness, homes, et al, the industry is becoming a money-spinner. Indians are spending typically Rs 500-2000 per online transaction, thereby contributing to the industry's upswing, notes the E-Retail Report. 

With all the shopping happening not just from homes or offices, but even by the consumer with his hand-held smart-gadgets on the move, there has been a spurt in demand for application developers. 

Networking platform ApnaCircle has observed that programming and application development have been the top IT skills in demand in the last one year. "Looking at our own site's stats, along with the industry trends, over 60% of the HR executives plan to hire application developers this year," notes founder and CEO Yogesh Bansal.