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India is witnessing a phenomenal rise in e-commerce startups in recent times. Based on a technological platform, these startups provide a wide range of services including online shopping, online ticket, hotel, taxi booking, commodity exchange (gold and silver), sale of financial products like an insurance policy, mutual funds, share and debenture (Girotra and Kaushik, 2018). In India, E-commerce business reached US $ 16 billion in 2015, and most conservative forecasting expects it to reach US $ 102 billion by 2020 (Deloitte, 2016). Another report on prospects of e-commerce in India projected it to cross $ 119 billion by 2020 (Maheshwari, 2016).
Similarly, according to projections of Indian Brand Equity Foundation (IBEF), revenue from this industry is expected to leapfrog from US $ 39bn in 2017 to US $ 120 bn in 2020 and thereby the industry is poised to register a growth rate of 51% which is highest in the world. Various factors responsible for exponential growth of e-commerce industry includes unprecedented rise in internet usage, financial literacy and availability of safe, secure and affordable platform for online transactions, government support and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), additional services by sellers like free home delivery, cash on delivery etc. (Reddy, 2017; Kalelkar, 2014). Buoyed by huge market potential, these startups are emerging as critical employers offering diverse employment opportunities with profiles ranging from customer support, software and hardware expert, sales and online marketing, logistics and delivery and the like, besides support functions (Girotra and Kaushik, 2018). The employee base of the industry is expected to reach 0.25 million by 2020 (Nasscom, 2016).
As discussed, e-commerce startups provide immense employment opportunities for talented personnel, but talent war between industry players has caused a severe problem of employee attrition in these companies (Parthasarthy and Pingle, 2014; Srivastava and Verma, 2012; Girotra and Kaushik, 2018; Garg, 2018). The employee often joins e-commerce startups for challenge, creativity, strategic and future-oriented work profile, but as an organization grows, the employee tends to get routine operational and structural work. And such job profile leads to the severe issue of employee engagement and retention. Another reason attributes cultural and expectation mismatch between senior executives and startup founders for the high attrition rate in the e-commerce industry (Livemint, 2016). Previous researchers have proposed the examination of ‘intention to leave' to deal with the challenge of attrition of effectively. The argument is based on fundamental premises of ‘prevention is better than cure.'
There is a growing trend of adopting positive emotions to resolve organizational problems. And subsequently, over the last few decades, the exploration, discussion, and debates on gratitude have increased exponentially. It has earned a unique distinction and recognition of being a highly valuable construct in the field of positive psychology (Seligman, 2002; response (Emmons, McCullough, and Tsang, 2003; Li and Xu, 2018; Fauziyyah and Luzvinda, 2018). Further, gratitude has transcended the domain of positive psychology and is being increasingly used by HR managers in modern organizations. Empirical researchers have already reported significant relation of gratitude wit employee well-being (McCullough et al., 2002; Emmons and McCullough, 2003; Watkins et al., 2003, 2014; Wood et al., 2009, 2010; Lin, 2016; Emmons and Mishra, 2011), with spiritual experience at workplace (McCullough et al., 2001; Fredrickson, 2004; Emmons and Mishra, 2011), with positive relationships and social support at work (Hu and Kaplan, .2014), with pro-social organizational behaviors (Michie, 2009; Grant and Gino, 2010), with organizational citizenship behaviors (Fehr et al., 2014; Dik et al., 2014; Spence et al., 2014; Garg, 2017b), with teamwork and altruism (Dik et al., 2014), with stress coping (Wood et al., 2007; Emmons and Mishra, 2011) and with work efficiency, productivity, and job performance (Emmons, 2003; Grant and Wrzesniewski, 2010). Acknowledging these studies, it is proposed that the realization of abundance and thankfulness (constituents of gratitude) may help e-commerce startups to address the issue of intention to leave.