[IOS Exclusive] Flipkart interview, here’s what sellers can expect from Big Billion Day

Big Billion Days (BBD) are just around the corner and it’s but natural that everyone is waiting with baited breath for 13-17 October 2015. This year has been one filled with high’s for Flipkart and BBD could be another feather in its already full cap!

Sharing in the ecommerce giant’s excitement, we wanted to know more especially about the preparations and the benefits for sellers. In this IOS exclusive interview, Manish Maheshwari (VP & Head of Seller Ecosystem, Flipkart) tells us more about BBD.

Manish Maheshwari, VP & Head of Seller Ecosystem

– Flipkart

What’s new this year for BBD? 

Big Billion Days this time will offer customers a wide range of selection to choose and shop for their family and friends this festive season. Be it apparels, footwear, mobiles, furniture, laptops, toys, large appliances, jewellery, watches or home furnishing items, customers can shop across a range of categories during this five-day long shopping festival. In fact, offering a bigger and better fashion range, Myntra will also be a part of Big Billion Days and will be presenting a curated selection from iconic fashion brands at never-before offers

Today, with over 75% of traffic coming via mobile, we expect this app only sale to be the biggest shopping event of the year. Bigger and better as compared to last year, we have worked towards ensuring a seamless shopping experience for our customers. We have also ramped up our technology and supply chain support to ensure all our 50 million customers have the best ever mobile shopping experience. To cater to the massive customer demand; we have opened new fulfilment centres across the country to guarantee efficient delivery.

Last year had many bloopers. How has Flipkart prepared for BBD this year?

On the tech front, we have developed a faster and bigger state-of-art infrastructure and app stack to handle much bigger sales than last year. Our app features like #FlipkartPing and #FlipkartImageSearch will offer customers a more customized shopping experience. We have more efficient machines as compared to last time. The in-house teams, with better architects, ensure a seamless machine management system. New services like image search and ping with a strong engineering layer will ensure that users have a much better and enjoyable shopping experience on the app.

Readying up our supply chain support, we have a robust team of close to 20,000 delivery boys to ensure efficient delivery. We have ramped up the number of fulfilment centres from 13 to 16 this year so that customers from smaller cities can shop with us too. We have also increased the delivery and mother hub capacity. We have also started implementing the automation technology to pick & move packages to designated picking station, among several other applications that make warehouse processes quicker and smoother.

What’s in it for sellers?

Sellers form the other part of the coin for us. Through big shopping events like these we offer sellers a platform to cater to high volume customer demands across the country. Sellers will get key benefits like:

• Better their product line: We have been preparing sellers with product insights that will help them streamline their product offerings as per customer requirements

• Customized products: Participation in big scale sale events like these will offer sellers a deeper understanding of how Indian customers behave and what are the products that they prefer to purchase

• Wider reach: As a run up to Big Billion Days, we have scaled up the number of fulfilment centres across the nation. Now sellers will be able to reach out to a wider set of customers from deeper pockets in India

• Sellers support facilities: Flipkart has been working closely with every seller to empower them to handle high scale events like this better. Be it training, financial assistance – a seller can avail all of it to grow their business

What kind of support can sellers expect from Flipkart for BBD?

Preparing sellers for India’s biggest sale has been one of our key priorities. We have been closely working with our seller base to empower and enable them to handle the sales during this perios better. In fact, we recently launched our Turbo charge Campaign for sellers especially for Big Billion days and festive period. Here are few other initaitives which have helped us enable sellers:

• Turbo Charge campaign – With the Big Billion Days just around the corner, Flipkart, is going all out to equip and empower sellers with the launch of the ‘Turbo Charge campaign’. The campaign primarily aims at enabling small sellers to streamline all the back-end processes involved in handling the massive customer demands during this period. Sellers will be given special packages on inventory and enterprise management to handle peak season sales

• F1 Stop campaign – A one-stop center offering services ranging across registration, training, cataloguing, packaging to financial assistances, sellers can pick and choose from the entire bouquet of services as per a sellers requirement

• Training Program – Training sessions are being held across citie sto educate sellers on how to ramp up their collections and inventory management processes to cater to teh large scale deand during Big Billion Days

• Growth Capital – To help SMEs leverage their business through the e-marketplace platform. With average loan value of Rs.5 lakhs – 1 crore is available for sellers . To add more collection for Big Billion Days, we have witnessed a lot of sellers availing this facility

• Seller Hub’ App: During Big Billion days, ‘Seller Hub’ App will help sellers to track and process their orders from where ever they are without and time lag. This app helps merchants to manage their businesses from anywhere and at any given time. The app offers sellers end-to-end visibility and enables them to enjoy a seamless selling experience. Focused on creating ease and convenience for sellers across the nation, this app helps sellers reach out to 50 million Flipkart customers on-the-go during Big Billion Days

And what does Flipkart expect from sellers for BBD?

A five day-long event – Big Billion Days are going to be our biggest event of this year. We will witness massive demand from customers across geographies.

We expect sellers to avoid selling any type of fake or counterfeit products to match up with the huge demand.

Everyone please note!