Flipkart to start offline pickup centres to reach all buyers

In an attempt to overcome the hiccups of delivery, Flipkart is now starting offline pickup centres. Techcircle reports that Flipkart is looking at providing options to its customers to pick up their orders at a convenient time. On many occasions, the delivery is obstructed due to the buyers’ unavailability at their residence, entry limitations on delivery boys in places like IT parks and residential associations. The pickup centres, called ‘experience zones’, have been initiated to overcome these hurdles. The customers can collect their orders from the centres whenever they are able to.

Alternative delivery model

The leading online marketplace has opened twenty experience zones in ten cities. Leading cities like Bangalore, Pune, Delhi, Kolkata, Mysore, Gurgaon, Vadodara, Vellore, Surat and Ahmedabad are currently hosting the pickup centres. The plan is to have a hundred experience zones up and running across India by March 2016.

Flipkart, which launched pilot experience zones six month back, has reported 80% of its deliveries collected from the experience zones. The purpose behind launching this ‘self help’ facility is to reduce the delay of delivery time, which will hamper the customers’ overall buying experience.

Amazon has been in the offline pickup scene for a while now. It had launched its pickup program with twenty centres initially. In April this year, it expanded this to close to 800 centres over forty-five cities. Amazon’s facility allows customers to pick up their orders from any available rental space, including local stores and vans! This facility has been extended to non- metro cities including Tanjore, Belgaum, Ludhiana and Kolhapur. Bharat Petroleum’s In and Out stores in Delhi and Mumbai are also a part of this scheme.

Future and growth of pickup centres

By bringing together different innovative options for the convenience of the customer, ecommerce sites are trying to make the shopping experience complete and fulfilling. Enabling the customer to pick up the purchases from strategic spots at a time convenient to the customer removes roadblocks for both parties, and reduces the operational cost for the ecommerce players.

While it would do good to continue the existing system of door delivery (where feasible), alternate solutions could also work. However, this should not be made a norm, as it could irk the customers. IOS had reported that India Post is being included in the ecommerce logistics wing. The story had mentioned instances where the postal department was getting complacent and telling the customers to pick up their parcels without attempting delivery.

With the increased reach of smartphone shoppers, it becomes tougher to deliver in remote areas. Ideas like offline pickup centres will definitely help tide over the hurdles of location and reach.