Flipkart Recruits Sellers and Riders for Big Billion Days

Flipkart will open the 13th Big Billion Days on 9 October after hiring more than 2.5 lakh seasonal workers and adding 75 percent more fashion sellers. Early access starts at midnight on 8 October for Plus, BLACK and Flipkart credit card members, the same day Amazon opens its Great Indian Festival to everyone.

Kalyan Krishnamurthy, CEO of Flipkart Group, used the 6 October announcement to talk about 500 million registered customers and 1.4 million sellers. The load-bearing work sits lower in the same brief: last-mile hiring, a July commission cut in fashion, and a warehouse push into Leh and Kargil.

Amazon Opens a Day Before Flipkart’s Public Sale

Amazon.in said the Great Indian Festival starts on 8 October for all customers, with a 10 percent instant discount on eligible SBI cards and EMI, and up to 10 percent extra for Prime. Flipkart’s own sale page sets general access a day later, on 9 October, and keeps the 8 October midnight window for members and Flipkart credit card holders. The sale page also lists VIP members among those who get in early.

Neither company has posted an end date. Last year’s Big Billion Days ran from 23 September to 2 October 2025. This year’s public start sits later on the calendar, and it opens into a rival festival that is already live on Thursday.

THE 2026 FESTIVE WINDOW

Amazon also said it added 20 fulfilment centres, six sort centres and 150 last-mile stations, and that Amazon Now is in over 60 cities with a plan to reach 100 before Diwali. Flipkart is answering with a denser last-mile map of its own, not a matching Prime clock.

75 Percent More Fashion Sellers After Zero Commission

The 6 October brief says this edition has the highest-ever number of participating sellers, with over 60 percent more transacting sellers than last year and twice the new selection. It also ties a separate intake to fashion: Flipkart says the introduction of zero commission on every fashion price brought 75 percent more sellers onto the platform ahead of this edition.

That policy went live on 8 July 2026. It had applied only to fashion priced up to ₹1,000 since 14 November 2025. Flipkart said the July extension covers about 90,000 transacting fashion sellers, including MSMEs and D2C brands. Kapil Thirani, vice president of Flipkart Fashion, framed it as a long hold on those merchants, not a week of banners.

India’s fashion ecosystem is evolving rapidly, with MSMEs, homegrown brands and D2C businesses driving much of that momentum. Our role is to create the conditions for them to grow. By extending this seller-first initiative across the entire fashion category, we are making a long-term investment in our sellers so they can invest more confidently in innovation, assortment expansion and brand building.

Kapil Thirani, Vice President, Flipkart Fashion

The catalogue behind them is already in the sheds. Flipkart says more than 2.5 crore units from MSMEs, small sellers, artisans and weavers have been pre-positioned in Ekart fulfilment centres, giving those lines a path to 500 million registered customers without waiting on a first-mile pickup during the rush. TBBD 2026 lists 150 million products and 1,200-plus fashion trends at their lowest prices of the year.

WHAT SELLERS GOT BEFORE THE GATES OPENED

• Fashion fee: Zero commission now sits on every fashion price point, after the ₹1,000 cap came off on 8 July 2026.
• Stock in sheds: More than 2.5 crore MSME, artisan and weaver units were placed in Ekart centres before the sale.
• Pickup: Seventy extra pick-up stations opened in key seller hubs to cut fulfilment time.
• Outside lanes: Ekart’s third-party logistics franchise network doubled to 600 within two months of launch, so firms off the marketplace can still use the pipes.

Meesho already sells a no-commission pitch across categories. Flipkart’s cut is narrower, and it is timed to a festival that still needs those sellers to fill fashion, beauty and gifting pages when Plus members walk in on Thursday night.

Last-Mile Work Takes 60 Percent of New Jobs

On 15 September Flipkart said it had created more than 2.5 lakh festive jobs, including gig roles, across more than 7,000 Ekart sites as they then stood. Nearly 75,000 of those openings, close to 30 percent, are for people entering the workforce for the first time. Last-mile delivery accounts for 60 percent of the new opportunities, or nearly 1.4 lakh roles, backed by more than 900 festive delivery hubs.

Flipkart’s own August 2025 note put last year’s seasonal run at 2.2 lakh-plus jobs, with 15 percent of roles for first-time workers and 650 new hubs. This year’s first-time share is close to 30 percent, and the hub count is over 900. The headcount is seasonal. The mix has shifted toward people who have not done this work before.

THE FESTIVE HEADCOUNT

• Total openings: More than 2.5 lakh direct and indirect roles, including gig work.
• First-time share: Nearly 75,000 people, close to 30 percent of the pool.
• Last-mile slice: Nearly 1.4 lakh roles, 60 percent of the new opportunities.
• Women in the chain: More than 20 percent of Flipkart’s supply chain workforce.

Rajneesh Kumar, chief corporate affairs officer at Flipkart Group, tied those first pay packets to a skills pipeline with the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, NCVET and ITI Kalyani. The Supply Chain Operations Academy has awarded nearly 10,000 certifications ahead of the season.

Commerce at scale creates opportunity at scale, across jobs, livelihoods and entrepreneurship. The nearly 75,000 people entering the workforce for the first time through Flipkart this festive season are one part of that larger ecosystem. As digital commerce grows across India, our responsibility is to ensure that this growth creates pathways into employment and entrepreneurship for more people, including communities that have historically had fewer opportunities to participate in the formal economy.

Rajneesh Kumar, Chief Corporate Affairs Officer, Flipkart Group, 15 September 2026

Wishmasters, Flipkart’s delivery partners, get term life insurance, personal accident cover and mediclaim, plus a Doctor on Call line for them and their families. The company also said it will help with e-Shram registration. Joining and retention bonuses and referral incentives are on the table for the season. An AI background check has cut onboarding to under 10 minutes, and the Delivery Partners app runs process training before a first shift.

Speed at the hiring door is the point. It is also the risk. High-value parcels still go missing at hubs, and first-time riders will carry a large share of a peak that Flipkart has sized for 30 percent more processing.

Leh and Kargil Join the Festival Map

On 29 September Flipkart said Ekart had added 14 million cubic feet of warehousing space, a 50 percent increase in storage, with automation lifting peak processing capacity by over 30 percent. The network is now more than 8,200 fulfilment and delivery facilities. It added over 900 delivery hubs and 750-plus PIN codes, including Leh, Kargil and communities across the Northeast, plus parts of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Mizoram, Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh.

Hemant Badri, senior vice president for supply chain, customer experience and re-commerce at Flipkart Group, said a customer in Leh or Kargil will experience Big Billion Days for the first time. Same-day and next-day delivery is the promise those PIN codes are meant to carry, on a map that until this season did not include those towns for the festival.

.@Flipkart is strengthening its supply chain ahead of The Big Billion Days to meet festive demand and extend access across India.

The scale-up spans 14 MN cu. ft. of additional warehousing space, 900+ additional delivery hubs and 750+ new PIN codes.

It also supports sellers and… pic.twitter.com/51BAhii6Eb

— Flipkart Stories (@FlipkartStories) September 29, 2026

THE BUILD TO 9 OCTOBER

1. 14 November 2025: Flipkart launches zero commission on eligible products priced below ₹1,000.
2. 8 July 2026: Zero commission extends across all fashion price points, covering about 90,000 transacting sellers.
3. 15 September 2026: Flipkart posts more than 2.5 lakh festive jobs, including 75,000 first-time roles.
4. 16 September 2026: Early access is set for 8 October, with the campaign line Luck Badal Sakta Hai, Yahan Kuch Bhi Ho Sakta Hai.
5. 29 September 2026: Ekart adds 14 million cubic feet and 750-plus PIN codes, including Leh and Kargil.
6. 6 October 2026: Flipkart announces the 13th Big Billion Days for 9 October, with 150 million products on more than 8,200 sites.
7. 8 October 2026: Member early access begins at midnight; Amazon’s festival opens to all customers.
8. 9 October 2026: Big Billion Days opens to the public.

The geography is the tell. A 13-year sale does not need Leh to move iPhones in Bengaluru. It needs those PIN codes if the next increment of orders is coming from towns that were off the festive grid.

A Fourfold Jump in Flipkart Minutes

Flipkart Minutes has grown 4x year on year and now runs across 150-plus cities and 9,000-plus PIN codes through nearly 1,200 microfulfilment centres. This season it will list 77,000-plus products across 1,400-plus categories, from daily essentials and farm-fresh produce to premium electronics, fashion and last-minute gifting, inside the Flipkart app and as a standalone Android app.

Patna, Jaipur, Guwahati, Siliguri and Salem are named as growth centres. That list sits in the same breath as the last-mile jobs. Minutes is the product that turns a warehouse hire into a 10-minute shift, and it is why 60 percent of the new openings are on bikes and in dark stores rather than in long-haul sheds.

The AI layer on the shopper side is the part the 6 October brief led with: text, voice and image search, a conversational assistant, a personalised feed, Creator Studio for sellers, and delivery intelligence via geocoding and last-mile orchestration. Those tools sit on top of the same 8,200-site network. They do not replace the 1.4 lakh extra people moving bags through it.

Membership Glitches Hit Before the 8 October Start

The sale page’s countdown is already live. So are the complaints that come with a gated head start. On 7 October, shoppers who bought Flipkart BLACK for early access said the app still listed them as Silver and told them to wait until 9 October. Flipkart Axis Bank credit card holders said the same countdown had not switched to member access. Those posts are not a poll. They are the friction a membership gate creates the night before a festival that sells the gate as the prize.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The clock: Early access is set for midnight on 8 October for Plus, BLACK and Flipkart credit card members; the public sale is 9 October.
• The overlap: Amazon’s Great Indian Festival opens to all customers on 8 October.
• The labour: More than 2.5 lakh seasonal openings, with nearly 1.4 lakh on the last mile.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• End date: Flipkart has not posted when Big Billion Days 2026 closes.
• Member access: Whether BLACK and credit-card early access will clear for every paid account before midnight on 8 October.

Flipkart still has to prove the new PIN codes, the 10-minute onboarding and the zero-commission fashion intake on a Thursday night that Amazon already owns. The public sale follows on Friday. The people who make that sequence hold are the 75,000 first-time workers, the 90,000 fashion sellers on a zero fee, and the Wishmasters riding into Leh.

Early access begins at midnight on 8 October for Plus, BLACK and Flipkart credit card members. The public Big Billion Days opens on 9 October, into a festival Amazon has already started.