To cater to the growing needs of millions of new and existing consumers coming online and to support market access for lakhs of MSMEs, Sellers, Artisans & Kiranas, Flipkart, India’s homegrown e-commerce marketplace, has significantly expanded its supply chain across the country. This massive infrastructure investment is aimed at bringing the festive cheer to Bharat consumers’ doorstep ahead of the festive season and BBD (the Big Billion Days) festive event. As part of this process, it has increased its last-mile reach with more than 3,000 facilities across the country to provide a fast and efficient e-commerce experience to consumers this festive period. This expansion will also help lakhs of sellers, MSMEs and artisans from smaller towns to connect with a pan-India consumer base through Flipkart’s supply chain.
Overall, Flipkart has added over 3.4 million square feet space across its supply chain assets including fulfilment centres, mother hubs and delivery centres throughout the country. These large fulfilment centres, spanning across an area of up to 5 lakh square feet each, are crucial to ensuring a seamless movement of goods between sellers and buyers. These fulfilment centres along with mother hubs or sortation centres and delivery centres also contribute to large scale creation of direct and indirect employment across the country. With this addition, the total warehousing space for Flipkart now totals to over 18 million square feet in addition to lakhs of square feet of assets from partner brands. This has been further strengthened with the onboarding of over 50,000 kiranas across the country which will help manage a higher number of shipments during the festive season.
Amitesh Jha, Senior Vice-President, Ekart and Marketplace, Flipkart said, “Flipkart has always been committed to bringing consumers online to ensure equitable distribution of the benefits of e-commerce. The pandemic has accelerated the expansion of our supply chain across the country, particularly smaller cities, to meet growing demands for e-commerce services. Also, keeping in mind the growth of e-commerce over the next few years, this expansion will enable us to connect millions of consumers across the country with lakhs of sellers and artisans in a fast and efficient manner. During the festive season, this additional space and infrastructure investment will also boost local employment, particularly for people who went back to their hometowns due to the lockdown, and create opportunities for local businesses to scale up their operations significantly with Flipkart.”
This expanded network of supply chain assets is important to serve the millions of new consumers from smaller cities who are coming online to experience the value and convenience of e-commerce. It also helps strengthen Flipkart’s presence in metros as well as tier-II, III cities and beyond such as Ladakh, Bishnupur (Manipur), and Dimapur (Nagaland), while creating thousands of local job opportunities. This festive season, Flipkart is creating nearly 70,000 direct jobs and lakhs of indirect jobs through its pan-India supply chain.
The COVID-19 induced pandemic has brought about tectonic shifts in consumer purchase patterns and has accelerated sellers’ transition to online platforms across products categories as they look for an enhanced role in e-commerce in their lives. From essentials such as groceries to grooming products, WFH furniture to home appliances, e-commerce has become the preferred choice for consumers and sellers across the country. While metros accounted for a large percentage of this trend before the pandemic, the pandemic has accelerated the transition of consumers and sellers from tier-II and tier-III markets to e-commerce. Flipkart’s expansion of supply chain in these regions ahead of the festive season will create a win-win situation for consumers, sellers, artisans and other ecosystem partners.
The expansion of the supply chain is in line with the large-scale employment Flipkart is creating with the upcoming festive season and the Big Billion Days. This will also contribute to making e-commerce more inclusive with broader participation of women across Flipkart’s supply chain.
