Amazon, Flipkart to Scale Up Their ecommerce Facilities for Festive Season

The E-commerce industry has seen great success during the pandemic, and many small and medium scale ecommerce businesses have been established. Giant ecommerce companies like Amazon and Flipkart utilize always implement new strategies to stood first and cope with the upcoming challenges. Concerning the consumer demand during the festive season, these ecommerce companies started widening their supply chain with the addition of new networks. 

Akhil Saxena, Vice President, Customer Fulfilment, APAC, MENA, and LATAM, Amazon, quoted that a festive season is a special event in the country. He further added that the customers always look forward to the great discounts on their favourite brands. 

To fulfil the customers' needs, sellers bring various models of appliances, mobile phones, computing devices, and personal care products. Saxena mentioned that to keep the inventory, they need infrastructure. He announced, ahead of the festive season, they are increasing the storage capacity of the fulfilment network by 40 per cent to ensure that they meet the increasing demands. 

The 40 per cent of Amazon's expansion accounts for the more than 43 million cubic feet of the storage capacity in 15 states, supporting over 850,000 sellers across the country. As per the Saxens's words, they have already expanded their networks in multiples states like Maharashtra, UP, Telangana, Tamilnadu, and Karnataka. 

Amazon has put its efforts to heavily invest in the country and bring thousands of direct and indirect work opportunities. Now this expansion has added more to their vision. Amazon has a widespread floor area of more than 10 million square feet housing millions of home and lifestyle products, which is more than the total land size of 125 football fields. 

'Local Shops on Amazon' has over 11,000 offline retailers and neighbourhood stores from Maharashtra. Amazon is dedicated to help the local shop sellers recover from the recent economic downturn and help them to grow their businesses. 

Amazon has become the destination for the 10 lakh direct and indirect jobs. It has committed to offering around 20 lakh direct and indirect jobs by 2025. Amazon was able to create 3 lakh direct and indirect employment opportunities even during the pandemic, Deepti Varma, HR Leader, Corporate, APAC, and MENA, Amazon said in an interview. Presently, there is around 80000 job opening in 35 cities across India.

Ecommerce festive sale market of 2020 was 23X compared to 2014. During October- November, the ecommerce industry ranked in $8.3 billion in gross sales. Expecting a big jump this year, too, Flipkart started expanding its supply chain network with the three new fulfilment centres. These new facilities serve the sellers of the large appliances, furniture, mobiles, apparel, and electronics from Kolar, Hubli, and Anekal. This expansion will support 10 500 more sellers and create 14000 direct and indirect job opportunities. 

In the event of the new facilities launch, Rajneesh Kumar, Chief Corporate Affairs Officer at Flipkart Group, said that they create value for their stakeholders with the onboard of the lakhs of MSMEs and small sellers to serve many customers across the country. He also mentioned that the tech-enabled supply chain would create many direct and indirect job opportunities. The new facilities will fuel the economy and make it more attractive for the ecommerce operations of the stakeholders, Sellers, MSMEs, small farmers, Kiranas, and artisans. 

To reach smaller towns, ecommerce companies are expanding their operations. Their supply chain and logistics experience considerable increase, paving way for the seasonal hiring across tier-2 and tier-3 cities.