Ahead of festive season, Amazon India invests in six new fulfillment centres

Amazon India has invested in six new fulfillment centres in Chennai, Coimbatore, Delhi, Jaipur and Mumbai. Spread over a total area of close to 2.5 million square feet currently, the company’s fulfillment centres will see1.5x growth in storage capacity to upto 7.5 million cubic feet of space.

Currently, over 1.3 million products are available for immediate shipping through Amazon’s fulfillment centres in India. These are present across 10 states viz. Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Delhi, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Telangana and West Bengal. With this new step, Amazon would be able to offer its Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA) service to several thousand more small & medium businesses.

“Fulfilment Centres fulfil important needs of small and medium enterprises seeking markets and customers located all over India and lacking resources to create their captive distribution networks; local entrepreneurs seeking opportunities to provide goods and services; qualified and educated young workforce in remote and rural areas seeking employment and skill development,” Akhil Saxena, Vice President, India Customer Fulfilment, Amazon India said.

“Apart from these benefits, the FC will also enable faster and quicker delivery of products to consumers across the region” he added.
Currently over 80% sellers on Amazon India use its fulfillment services. Sellers across the country have to send their products to Amazon’s Fulfillment Centres once an order is placed, and Amazon picks, packs and ships the order to the customer, offers customer service and manages returns on behalf of the sellers. These are the same orders that are eligible for Cash on Delivery, Guaranteed Next-Day, Same Day, Release Day and Sunday delivery.

Amazon is pumping money into its India business now. In June, it invested $200 million to get more market share in the India e-commerce space. Amazon India has till now spent upto $2.4 billion, a notch above the $2 billion it committed in July 2014.

Image credit: Indiatimes