Essential service providers may have been exempted from the 21 day coronavirus-enforced lockdown, but delivery services are facing difficulties in reaching out to customers.
As per a Livemint report, online supermarket Bigbasket is facing difficulties in fulfilling its home deliver orders. To give a bit of context, as the lockdown was enforced and transport systems shut down, many delivery and warehousing staff members of the company has opted to return to their hometowns or stay home-bound.
This has however put a severe dent in the company's ability to rapidly fulfill the "unprecedented' level of orders.
"Our teams have been working round the clock to tide over this issue so that customers can place orders as usual and seamlessly receive them," the publication quoted Tanuja Tewari, the Vice President of Human Resources to add.
In an update on Friday the company took to Twitter to add that their HR personnel were now "working on recruiting and retaining people so that we can increase our capacity".
"Our delivery and operations teams have been working tirelessly to ensure that we are able to deliver as many orders as possible," the company assured.
As of Friday afternoon, Bigbasket said that they were "operational across all our cities with limited slot capacities". The two exceptions, the company said, were Kochi and Indore, where they were working to become operational.
According to the company, local authorities had also helped them get their operations up an running.
"As per the instruction of local authorities, we are asked to pause our operations. We hope to be back soon," the company added.
"We were operating at 10% of our capacity on 25th and as of yesterday, we are operating at 40% of capacity planned, the company said.
The company also said that they had increased their server capacity by 50% so as to handle more traffic and orders.
Amid the coronavirus outbreak the company has taken a slew of measures to ensure the safely of both employees and customers. Warehouses, delivery crates and other necessary equipment are sanitised on a daily basis and the company has provided employees with masks and gloves. They are also regularly thermally scanned.
In a bid to avoid contact, the company has also shifted to cashless payment options.
In India there have been over 2000 cases recorded so far. According to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, 56 people who had tested positive have passed away.
