Manish Sabharwal, Executive Vice-Chairman of Teamlease, in an interview with CNBC-TV18, COVID-19 forced adoption of ecommerce and digitisation, which otherwise would have taken three-five years. He also believes that there is pent-up demand.

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He also discussed what exactly the staffing situation is looking like ahead of the festive season.

“So the big hiring that you are seeing in ecommerce, in customer services, in sales is a reflection of pent-up demand combined with the mandatory digital literacy programme that COVID-19 forced on consumers,” he said.

He believes some of it is anticipatory hiring but it is also backed up by a real uptick in demand.

“I am a little hesitant to say that things have gone back to normal but I think there is clearly an uptick in the way all our customers are thinking about,” he shared.

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Many of them regretted in the first wave of COVID-19 when they cut back too quickly and when the demand came back and they could not fulfil that demand. Many of the large fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG), the ecommerce players will not make that mistake again, he noted.

The second wave of COVID-19 was economically much less damaging.

“Last year we had 20-30 percent decline in Q1. During the second wave maybe corporate India learnt how to deal with lockdowns, maybe lockdowns weren’t one size fits all. So clearly, the second wave of COVID-19 not being as economically damaging as the first wave of COVID-19, gives some confidence to companies that the third-wave of COVID-19 can be easily handled if at all it comes,” he said.

For the full interview, watch the accompanying video.

(Edited by : Bivekananda Biswas)

First Published:Sept 3, 2021 5:22 PM IST