The aggressive entry of India Inc into the farm retailing sector has triggered off another churn in the booming retail hiring front.

With Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries going aggressivly into agri and food retailing, and the likes of ITC, Bharti’s FieldFresh, Mahindra’s Shubhlabh, Thapar’s Global Green, Godrej and Euro Fruits already in the field, the war for talent is hotting up.

Industry experts feel the high-growth sector—which currently employs over 35,000 people—will see firms vying with each other to either employ or retain both generalist hands and specialists like agri scientists, supply chain, cold storage managers and warehousing experts. The sector—which got several incentives in the last Union Budget—is expected to generate 2.50 lakh jobs by 2009.

Says E Balaji, COO, MaFoi Consultants: ‘‘Though the sector is just evolving, as companies try to consolidate, integrate and mechanise to improve productivity, the demand for readymade manpower would definitely go up manifold. By 2008-09, the demand would outstrip supply in the sector.’’

To begin with, Reliance Retail has already shown a huge appetite for manpower. In Punjab itself, RIL will invest Rs 5,000 crore in a mega agri project that is expected to create over 30,000 new jobs. It will set up five agri hubs in the state apart from 52 rural business hubs and over 300 satellite rural business hubs in different parts of the state.

Existing players in the sector have already started feeling the heat as some of the Bharti’s FieldFresh employees have quit to join other retail ventures. FieldFresh, the JV between Bharti Enterprises and Rothschild with a staff strength of 68, has employees coming in from FMCG and agri business firms like Hindustan Lever, Pepsi Foods, Godrej Agrovet, Nestle India, Deutsche Bank and Beatson Clark (UK).

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