The same-day ecommerce delivery service, pioneered by Amazon through its Prime subscription model in 2017, has recently witnessed a revival. Joining the fray on Thursday, is its rival Flipkart.
Flipkart has introduced same-day delivery services across 20 cities for a range of products, encompassing mobiles, fashion, beauty products, lifestyle items, books, home appliances, electronics, and more.
Among the cities covered are Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Bhubaneshwar, Coimbatore, Chennai, Delhi, Guwahati, Hyderabad, and Indore.
It’s worth noting that the company backed by Walmart initiated its same-day delivery service in 2014, covering 10 cities. However, it eventually discontinued the service. During that period, users were charged a shipping fee of INR 200.
With the new service, customers can have their orders delivered before midnight if placed by 1 PM, as stated by the company. The firm also announced plans to extend this feature to other cities in the upcoming months.
Last year, Flipkart announced investments in multiple fulfillment centers and advanced technological capabilities to improve the sorting of products, all geared towards enabling same-day delivery.
Months of meticulous planning were undertaken to ensure orders are fulfilled from the closest fulfillment center, thereby reducing transit times and optimizing the overall efficiency of the delivery process, as stated in the announcement.
“Considering that customers not just from metro cities but non-metros cities love to shop on Flipkart, we are working to provide same-day delivery to 20 cities, reinforcing our commitment to staying at the forefront of customer satisfaction. We will further scale it in the months to come, to include more cities and more categories including large appliances, to delight the customers,” said Hemant Badri, SVP, group head of supply chain, customer experience and recommerce business at Flipkart Group.
This development follows closely on the heels of Flipkart introducing its Unified Payments Interface (UPI) offering to an initial group of users, marking another stride in fortifying its foothold in the fintech sector.
Continue Exploring: Flipkart nears profitability amidst cost reduction measures and fintech expansion
In the midst of its business expansion, the company is anticipated to implement employee layoffs in the upcoming months.
According to a report from Moneycontrol, the company is reducing approximately 1,000 positions as part of its annual performance review process. This move is anticipated to result in a 5% reduction in the team size. Contrary to this, a previous report indicated that the layoffs would affect around 5-7% of the total workforce.
The company currently has a workforce of approximately 22,000 employees.
However, according to a source knowledgeable about the situation, the reported layoff figures are speculative. The source mentioned that the company regularly conducts performance reviews, and the results will only be revealed by the end of March-April.
Continue Exploring: Walmart-owned Flipkart initiates annual job cuts, targets 5-7% workforce reduction by April
In October last year, Flipkart introduced “Flipkart VIP” at an annual fee of INR 499, which is INR 500 lower than the cost of Amazon Prime membership. The membership entails complimentary same-day/next-day deliveries for VIP members in specific areas. However, the company did not specify whether one-day delivery is exclusively reserved for VIP members.
It is worth mentioning that with the rising prevalence of smartphones, the utilization of UPI and the broader digital payments infrastructure has surged in the country. Notably, in the most recent developments, Zomato, a major player in the foodtech industry, and the Indian arm of global digital payments startup Stripe have obtained approval from the RBI to operate as online payment aggregators.
Continue Exploring: Zomato’s ZPPL gets green light from RBI to operate as online payment aggregator
In FY23, Flipkart Internet Private Limited’s B2C segment allocated INR 6,571.2 Crores towards transportation expenses, marking a 30% rise from the previous fiscal year’s INR 5,045.6 Crores. The operating revenue for the year reached INR 14,845.8 Crores, reflecting a 42% increase compared to the INR 10,477.4 Crores generated in FY22. Kalyan Krishnamurthy, the group’s chief executive, expressed optimism about the company’s approach to profitability, citing a substantial reduction in monthly cash burn.
