Benevolve has announced that it is highlighting how AI-powered skills intelligence can help businesses prepare for festive-season demand by looking beyond employee numbers to assess workforce capabilities, identify skill gaps and improve operational readiness.
According to a September 2026 report by NLB Services, festive hiring in India is projected to increase by 15–20 per cent this year, generating 2–2.5 lakh seasonal and gig jobs between July and December. Tier II and Tier III cities are expected to account for around 45 per cent of this demand. While businesses typically respond by increasing headcount, Benevolve believes workforce planning also needs to consider the skills and capabilities already available within an organisation.
The festive period places pressure on multiple business functions, including fulfilment, inventory management, logistics, customer experience and support. Although seasonal recruitment helps address higher workloads, companies also need to understand which existing employees can be redeployed, where specialist skills are in short supply and which gaps require targeted hiring or upskilling.
Benevolve’s AI-powered skills intelligence platform maps employee capabilities across an organisation and aligns them with business requirements. It enables leaders to identify shortages in critical skills, assess opportunities to move employees between functions and determine where additional training or recruitment could have the greatest impact. The approach aims to shift workforce planning from reactive hiring towards more structured capability management.
The company’s technology is already being used by enterprise clients across sectors, including retail and e-commerce, where it has supported an AI-led internal talent marketplace. Benevolve said its platform currently supports more than 35,000 employees across enterprise clients.
Aditya Singh, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Benevolve, said festive workforce planning should involve more than bringing in additional employees to meet seasonal demand. He emphasised the importance of understanding existing skills, identifying critical gaps and determining where redeployment or targeted recruitment can deliver the most value. He added that the need for skills-level workforce intelligence extends beyond the festive period.
The company sees skills-first planning as increasingly relevant for consumer-facing and digital-first businesses operating with lean teams, shorter operating cycles and fluctuating demand. By aligning employee capabilities with changing business needs, organisations can build greater workforce flexibility rather than relying solely on repeated cycles of seasonal recruitment and staff reductions.
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