Recently during hiring process at bluegape, I got a chance to meet with couple of employees of e-commerce companies in India. Yes! they were looking to switch their Jobs as either they were afraid that company will shut down soon or they will be fired.
Ok, I am taking example of one E-Commerce Company based out of New Delhi. That E-Commerce Company was doing 400 to 600 transactions everyday and recently got acquired by bigger e-commerce company. When I asked the employee about team size of that E-Commerce company, I was shocked to know that 400 employees are working there and doing 400-600 transactions a day.
I asked that employee, why do you want to switch your Job. He replied me that CEO told us to switch our Jobs as he/she might leave the company soon.
My first interview question was: What is the one thing you want to change in your company if you will be appointed as a CEO for one day. He answer was exactly what I was thinking. He said, he will fire 90% employees of the company as there’s no need of such a big team.
For E-Commerce companies playing in niche has ticket size of INR 700 to INR 2000 and makes on an average INR 100 each order after discounts (Coupon Sites are getting more traffic than most of the E-Commerce Companies), shipping, packaging and taxes. I am not including the cost of people procuring and packaging that order. Average salary in a E-Commerce company is around INR 12,000 Per Month. Obviously few champs have bigger chunk of that Salary.
Now if for each employee in a company, you are not shipping 20 products a day. You can’t be profitable. Ever, Ever, Never !
And dude trust me, Team of 30 People can manage 600 orders a day. Yes! I am counting your category managers, developers, designers, marketing guys all into it.
We work at this basic formula in bluegape. When we make an increase in 50-60 orders a day, we expand our team by 2-3 people. You can’t expect same guy to work 10 times of what he is doing right now. It all depends on how you put responsibilities on them initially. That employee told me that other reason of why he wants to switch his Job because he sits idle for most of the day and surf on net etc. He said, I want to do hard-work and challenging Job.
Exactly, most of the people in early 30s perform really well when you give them challenging work. No one likes to sit idle and get salary. Atleast I can’t do that. Everyone wants to learn new things.
However that very company got lot of money from VCs and they are expected to scale pretty fast. At the end of a day, their startup is their baby and they should build it in a way they want.
P.S. : This shapeless soul tweets @sbaghla
P.P.S. : Few rockstars are building India’s Biggest Fan Merchandising store at www.bluegape.com ! Check them out.
