While launching a zero commissions pilot project recently, ecommerce giant, Flipkart made it abundantly clear that two ways of raising future income lies in selling advertising space and logistics. While the ecommerce marketplace is on the verge of providing a delivery service to 3rd party sellers, another fantastic opportunity has now presented itself.
According to reports, Flipkart’s largest seller, WS Retail is slowly being phased out, which means there is lot of warehouse space that has now become available. In 2012, Flipkart’s owners, Sachin and Binny Bansal withdrew from WS Retail, in which they partly owned. Despite this fact, WS retail continued to be Flipkart’s top seller, contributing to an estimated 80% of sales, but now sales are slowly declining.
Flipkart is now giving the chance for sellers to acquire warehouse space, in exchange for attaining ‘priority seller status’ on the online marketplace. In September, news came to light that Flipkart had reacquired its logistics arm ‘ekart’ from WS Retail. It is understood that this vacant space belongs to ekart.
Flipkart currently runs ‘Flipkart Advantage’, where sellers who stock their products with Flipkart avail of numerous advantages. It is assumed most of these advantages would be included in the ‘priority seller status’, such as a quality check of your products and faster delivery.
“They have already spent money on the infrastructure and warehouses are lying empty because WS Retail is not buying goods anymore. They want us to use that infrastructure. They are telling large dealers to move into their warehouses and they say they will guarantee and will give priority on their platform,” said a top executive in know of things.
Editor team is specialized in introducing the marketplace content targeting the Indian online sellers. They plan and coordinate to bring the appealing content for the small businesses on how to partner with the e-commerce sites like Amazon and Flipkart and strategies for improving their online business.
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