With the announcement by the Ministry of Home Affairs and a further clarification by several states on allowing e-commerce companies to deliver all goods and not just essential products from 20 April, a number of companies are now preparing to ramp up operations and are hiring migrant workers who are stuck in cities and large industrial towns.

Also Read: E-commerce players set to start operations in full swing starting 20 April

States like Maharashtra, Odisha, Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan have confirmed and clarified that e-commerce companies will be allowed to function starting 20 April.

Retail chains, FMCG companies including Amul and Parle Products, e-commerce firms like Flipkart and Grofers, RPG Group and several temp staffing companies have already started hiring some of the workers.

In order to ramp up its back-end manpower, Walmart-owned Flipkart has hired 4,000 new people and is looking at more opportunities.

Retailers Association of India (RAI) CEO Kumar Rajagopalan confirmed that some of the large food and grocery retail chains have hired or are in the process of hiring migrant workers for backend roles like loading and unloading.

Migrant workers in lakhs are stuck in large cities due to the lockdown.

Rituparna Chakraborty, Co-founder at temp staffing firm Team Lease Services, also said that the company is tapping into these jobless workers.

While the online firms are ramping up to start operations, clarifications on what can and cannot function post 20 April is something retailers and sellers are looking for. Given that Amazon, Flipkart, etc. are online marketplaces, it’s important that their sellers restart operations as well.

However, the sellers body All India Online Vendors Association said that there has been different communication from different platforms and it was still waiting to get more clarity in the coming days.