Soon you can order from your neighbourhood grocery store through Flipkart and Amazon

Advertisement
Soon you can order from your neighbourhood grocery store through Flipkart and Amazon
Advertisement
Brainstorming sessions in Indian eCommerce scenario must be a hard task. Making a virgin industry grow and match upto Indian consumers’ psyche requires tremendous strategizing and reaching out to more people. Flipkart and Amazon India are deploying strategies to reach out to local merchants in cities and towns. According to a news report by The Economic Times, the two market leaders in the eCommerce industry have realized that delivery strategies are becoming a crucial front in curbing costs and winning customers.

Amazon deployed carts offering free tea, cold water and lemon juice to retailers, business owners, sellers and small and medium enterprises in Panchkula, a small town in Haryana where it began a pilot last week of this initiative.

"Each 'Amazon Chai Cart' has an Amazon-trained person who holds discussions with interested sellers on the process of selling online, introduces them to seller-specific services like FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon), Amazon Easy Ship, and also introduces them to Amazon. in's seller education programs,” Amit Deshpande, directorseller services at Amazon India told the ET.
'Fulfillment' is where Amazon handles delivery of product stored at its warehouses, as against merchants handling deliveries. Easy Ship is a delivery service wherein orders are picked up from a sellers by an Amazon logistics partner and delivered to buyers.

Flipkart, India's largest electronic marketplace, has established training centres in small towns to help local merchants sell online. "A large focus area for us is the creation of a network of local partners who help sellers and facilitate their business needs like catalogue creation, manpower and training, packaging and lending," Ankit Nagori, senior vice president marketplace, at Flipkart told the financial daily.

Advertisement

Hyper Local Formula
Hyper-local strategies are becoming central to online marketplaces in India as they struggle to contain delivery costs and schedules. Currently, online retailers take at least 3-4 days to deliver a package, at an average cost of Rs 70 per kg of shipment.

With an ambition to reach out to smaller towns also has become imperative as about 13 million of 53 million digital buyers reside in small cities and towns, the non-metros. About 69 million of India's 232 million active internusers reside in rural India, as per a study by the Internet and Mobile Association of India.

Currently, Flipkart and Amazon charge extra for delivering products the same day or the next after an order is placed for products lying in their warehouses. With companies adopting hyper-local strategies this can be obviated.

(Image : India Times)