Roles in Demand in India's Ecommerce Miracle

Widespread internet access and greater smartphone penetration have had spin-off effects on many sectors of the economy.

Take e-commerce, for example. According to the India Brand Equity Foundation, the Indian e-commerce market has been growing at a CAGR of nearly 20% for the last four years.

What’s more, it is projected to continue growing at similar rates for the next ten years or so. Staggering!

How has it grown?

The customer side of the equation is evident; the graph means that so much more business is being done by customers through the e-commerce route, with the many (probably millions) establishments using e-commerce as a channel of sales.

What is not usually evident is the infrastructure that supports these volumes. The industry would find it difficult to run up a transaction value of $125 billion in 2024 using the resources it had in 2021 when it did business worth $67 billion.

The supporting infrastructure needs to keep pace.

And it has. But it has not been an unmixed blessing. While it has created many jobs, it has also caused a reduction in many others. While traditional retail jobs like cashiers and customer service have been under survival pressure, there has been a surge in roles in logistics, warehousing, digital marketing, and technology development.

In April 2025, an ET Retail article quoted an EY study which forecast that “The e-commerce sector in India is expected to witness the highest salary increments.” This is another indicator of the growing demand and employment creation in the industry.

Roles in demand

Twisting a well-known adage, while a rising tide lifts all boats, some are lifted more than others.

According to a study by Pahle India Foundation (PIF) is a not-for-profit policy think tank, ‘The top skills required by online vendors include Data Management, Packaging & Delivery, Social Media Management, Website or Mobile App savviness, knowledge of Computers and Software…21% vendors expressed the imminence of a shortage in the availability of skilled professionals, especially for skills in ‘Marketing’ and ‘Operations.’

The major job families driving employment are covered in this section.

Management & Strategy

In addition to leadership roles that span across functions, marketplace lead, category manager and e-commerce manager are some of the roles classified under this group.

The key responsibility of this group is ensuring overall optimization, which includes ensuring that the many moving parts comprising the business are well-oiled and are able to work in harmony in order to drive the company’s objectives.

Marketing and Digital Marketing

Much of marketing today comes down to digital marketing with its claim and ability to hyper-personalize and target, and “be found” through the SEO and search route. Social media management, SEO/ SEM specialists and digital marketing managers are roles that have assumed importance for e-commerce.

This group drives initiatives such as optimization of search engine visibility, driving traffic to the website through paid and unpaid campaigns and overall management, maintaining an attractive digital storefront, and creation of the company’s image and presence to the external world in media, including social media. As drivers of demand, this group assumes significant importance.

Business Intelligence and Analytics

With a significant volume of work being digital, with its ability to create a footprint, leveraging that digital footprint becomes a key weapon in the armoury of e-commerce companies. CRM analyst and data analyst are generic terms for roles in this space.

They track the data and make connections that get fed into the marketing teams and help them improve their targeting efforts to get better returns from their ad spends.

​Supply Chain & Logistics

We have witnessed a transformation in the supply chain and logistics industry as e-commerce has grown. This is the beating heart of fulfilment in the industry. It can be considered to be a combination of multiple sub-industries, such as order management, warehousing, transportation, last-mile delivery, and returns management, to name a few prominent ones. Some go so far as to say that the real product in e-commerce is the supply chain. If it fails, everything fails.

Warehouse operations manager, logistics specialist, supply chain leader are some of the established roles in this space.

Technology

This should come as no surprise. As often said these days, every business is a technology business. The platform on which the business runs, either proprietary or shared, is probably the first and foremost responsibility. In a dynamic industry, managing product lifecycles and elevating the user’s experience also becomes a shared responsibility. 

UI/UX designer, full-stack developer, AI experts and product manager are key roles in the technology function in the industry. Technology leadership, though not specifically a role, is also important to ensure the business and platform is leveraging emerging technologies for business benefit.

Customer Support & Experience

As long as there are customers, the need to elevate their experience will always be there. Chat and email support agents and customer experience manager are roles most e-commerce companies have, apart from a call centre, either in-house or outsourced.

It must be noted that many customer service roles are likely to be transactional roles and an opportunity for a foothold in the industry.

Conclusion

Either functional (or horizontal) and industry (or vertical) specialization is often used to determine the initial suitability of an applicant for a role. With the world becoming more competitive and complex, employers now look for suitability on both parameters.

Ushankk tracks applicants and matches them to employer needs. We have been a contributor to the industry with our strategic and judicious matching of roles and applicants.