Swedish furniture giant Ikea is planning to hire 10,000 people, both directly and indirectly, in Maharashtra over the next two to three years.

Ikea operates 423 Ikea stores spread across 50 countries with a sales volume of 38.3 billion euros. Back in August, it opened its first store in India at Hyderabad, where it currently employs 1,000 people.

Its second outlet will come up in Navi Mumbai.

“Next year, we are opening the Navi Mumbai store, for which we are planning to recruit 5,000 directly and an equal number will be hired indirectly over the two to three years,” Ikea India’s people and culture manager Anna-Carin Mansson was quoted as saying.

The recruitment will entail direct hiring of 1,000 by mid-next year and 1,500 indirectly for services, including assembly and others. Further, per the company policy, 50 percent of this recruitment will be of women.

“We believe in equality and providing a balanced, safe and secure work environment for all employees. We are also open for recruiting from the lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT) communities,” she added.

The world’s largest furniture chain will hire mostly locals across various fields like e-commerce, sales, logistics, digital and Human Resources.

“With our employee friendly policies, we are expecting to keep the attrition levels very low. We believe in value-based recruitment, where the core values of an individual is considered and not what is said in the CV. We provide equal opportunities to all our co-workers, help them grow and enable them to follow their passion,” she added.

Ikea has several employee-friendly policies, such as daycare facilities, parental leave policy, transport policy, competence development, mentoring, pension plan among others.

“Maharashtra is an important market for us. We have been sourcing from the state for many decades and now we are ready to enter the market in 2019 with our full offer to be able to serve all the customers,” Ikea India market manager for Maharashtra Per Hornell said.

The company is the first major single-brand retailer to get FDI approval and plans to open several stores and multiple touch points across the major cities over the next 10 years.

Back to latest news