India’s online festive season is shaping up to be its strongest in five years, and the expected surge in shopping is prompting e-commerce and quick-commerce platforms to ramp up hiring of temporary and gig workers across fulfilment, warehousing and last-mile delivery.
Redseer Strategy Consultants expects online retail to grow 25 per cent year-on-year during the 2026 festive period, up sharply from 16 per cent last year. The growth comes as India’s online retail market is expected to cross $90 billion in calendar year 2026, expanding 22-24 per cent from a year earlier.
The stronger festive outlook is translating into higher workforce requirements, as platforms prepare for a spike in order volumes. According to Deepesh Gupta, Director and Head of Business, General Staffing, Adecco India, festive hiring across e-commerce and quick commerce is expected to rise 15-20 per cent this year, taking the temporary and gig workforce requirement to around 2.5-2.7 lakh (approximately 2.16 lakh).
The scale-up is already visible at individual platforms. Flipkart said it will create more than 2.5 lakh direct and indirect employment opportunities, including gig workers, for the festive season. Nearly 1.4 lakh of these opportunities will be in last-mile operations, while the company is adding more than 900 festive delivery hubs across its network. Nearly 75,000 opportunities are expected to be for first-time workforce entrants.
Quick commerce is emerging as a bigger contributor to seasonal workforce demand. Gupta estimates the segment will account for 40-45 per cent of festive flexible workforce requirements (30-35 per cent), translating into around 1-1.25 lakh temporary workers.
Redseer expects quick commerce to grow 110-120 per cent year-on-year during the festive period, compared with 16-18 per cent growth for the rest of e-commerce. The channel could account for nearly one-fifth of festive online retail this year, highlighting its growing influence on both consumption and the workforce needed to service it.
Demand drivers
The sharp expansion in quick commerce is also changing the composition of seasonal hiring. Delivery executives, warehouse associates, picker-packers, sortation staff, fleet coordinators and dark-store workers are expected to account for much of the additional demand.
Adecco expects logistics and last-mile delivery hiring to increase 30-35 per cent, while organised retail and e-commerce hiring could rise 25-28 per cent. The hiring footprint is also spreading beyond metros, with around 45 per cent of workforce demand expected from tier-2 and – 3 cities, including Lucknow, Bhubaneswar, Jaipur and Coimbatore.
However, staffing firms said competition for frontline workers is intensifying as e-commerce, quick commerce and logistics companies hire simultaneously. Employers are, therefore, relying more on referrals, existing talent pools and incentives to retain workers through the peak period.
Temporary wages are expected to rise 10-15 per cent year-on-year, according to Adecco, with companies using attendance bonuses, retention payouts, productivity-linked incentives and referral bonuses. TeamLease Services, meanwhile, expects frontline salaries to rise 8-10 per cent in H2 2026, with employers increasingly using variable pay, surge multipliers, fuel and shift allowances and completion bonuses to attract workers.
The demand is being driven by a broad-based festive recovery rather than mobiles and electronics alone. Redseer expects grocery to grow 48-50 per cent, home and furniture 32-35 per cent, BPC 35-40 per cent and fashion 20-22 per cent during the festive period. Mobiles are expected to grow 5-7 per cent, while electronics could expand 15-17 per cent.
For staffing firms, the shift suggests festive hiring is increasingly becoming a pipeline into longer-term frontline employment. Adecco estimates nearly a quarter of seasonal associates could transition into longer-term assignments, as the festive workforce increasingly becomes an integral part of India’s expanding digital-commerce ecosystem.