Online grocery platform bigbasket is looking at hiring 10,000 people for its warehouses and last-mile delivery to clear pending orders quickly and meet the spike in orders on account of the nationwide lockdown.

'We are looking to hire 10,000 people for our warehouses and last-mile delivery. This hiring will happen across all 26 cities that we are present in,' bigbasket vice-president of human resources Tanuja Tewari told PTI.

She added that the pressure is being felt across all cities with the challenges being higher in tier I cities.

E-commerce companies have been struggling to deliver orders after the 21-day lockdown, imposed to contain the spread of the deadly coronavirus, came into effect from March 25.

Even though the government has allowed delivery of essential goods including food, pharmaceuticals and medical equipment through e-commerce platforms, players have complained of their delivery staff being hassled by police.

With local authorities shutting down warehouses and stopping trucks from crossing state borders, e-commerce players have seen their operations getting disrupted.

The companies have resumed operations and working to complete pending orders. Some companies are giving people the option to cancel their orders, and are also delaying taking fresh orders to ensure the pending orders get delivered.

Another challenge facing the industry is the availability of limited staff for warehouses and logistics.

Tewari said currently, there is a shortfall of 50 per cent staff in the company's warehouses and delivery team.

The company has started taking orders in all the cities but due to capacity constraints the slots are getting filled very quickly, she added.

In a tweet, bigbasket said it is operating at about 40 per cent of its planned capacity.

'We are operational across all our cities with limited slot capacities except Kochi and Indore... We were operating at 10 per cent of our capacity on March 25 and as of yesterday (April 2), we are operating at 40 per cent of capacity planned,' it said.

The company also has permits/passes from government authorities to ensure that its employees have safe passage for their work. It is also providing attractive salary and benefits package including health insurance to help staff at this difficult time.

On Thursday, bigbasket partnered with ride-hailing platform Uber to deliver household essentials to customers.

Nivea to distribute hand sanitisers for free

Personal grooming products maker Nivea India on Friday said it has started production of hand sanitisers from its skincare manufacturing plants in collaboration with its key partners.

The company said its plant at Sanand in Gujarat which originally manufactures skincare products for the India market has begun production of alcohol-based hand sanitisers, and it will be shifting part of its production towards the making of sanitisers at the plant.

The hand sanitisers will be distributed free of cost to the public hospitals and healthcare institutions in Ahmedabad and Vadodara as well as to distribution partners across the country, the company said in a statement.

'Extraordinary circumstances call for extraordinary solutions and we are happy to do our part to help in this time of need. We have been in constant touch with the local authorities and our key partners, having worked very hard over the past few weeks to make the switch at our plant and formulate the liquid hand sanitisers,' Nivea India managing director Neil George and vice-president of supply chain for the region Omar Navarro said in a joint statement.

This project was made possible in a record time only through the support and cooperation of the company's associates, including Gujarat Print Pack Ltd which provided packaging labels for the sanitiser bottles completely free of cost and Hyderabad-based partner Aptar Beauty and Home India Pvt Ltd, which provided pump assembly free of cost, they added.

The soaring demand for hand sanitisers following the coronavirus pandemic has already made several companies -- from FMCG players such as Patanjali, Emami, Raymond Consumer Care and Dabur to liquor makers like Radico Khaitan and Diageo -- to venture into manufacturing of the disinfectant.