Logistics for MSMEs: E-commerce company Flipkart has extended the logistics and warehousing services of its supply chain business eKart Logistics to other small and medium businesses, brands, and large businesses as well outside its network. In a company statement on Thursday, Flipkart said eKart would offer end-to-end supply chain management, including dropship, inventory management, distribution, aggregation, and more. Moreover, Flipkart’s services arm Jeeves – will provide installation, demo & repair services for the after-sales needs of businesses.
eKart has a network of fulfilment centres, mother hubs or sortation centres, and delivery hubs that deliver nearly 100 million shipments a month. The centres have cross-belt sorters and automated guided vehicles to automatically sort shipments based on the pin codes, robotic arms, automated packaging and address intelligence for accurate shipments.
“The business will extend its capabilities to small and medium businesses providing a trusted partner to their logistics requirements. The suite of services provided by eKart across Cash on Delivery, QR based payment, Open Box delivery, Tech-visit and re-inventorization, will help serve brands, platforms and small and large businesses with all their fulfilment needs,” Flipkart said.
“As a supply chain that has grown and evolved with the e-commerce industry, we understand the unique opportunities and challenges present in the Indian market and are agile to evolve with them to provide the most efficient delivery service for businesses,” said Hemant Badri, Senior Vice President, eKart. The company employs over 2 lakh people directly or indirectly, across its operations and runs a programme called Vividhta to enable the active participation of women in its supply chain.
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eKart was acquired by Flipkart back in 2015 from one of its prominent sellers WS Retail Services.
Among its supply chain initiatives, Flipkart February last year had announced it will deploy more than 25,000 electric vehicles by 2030. Its electric fleet would include two-wheeler, three-wheeler, and four-wheeler vehicles designed and assembled in India. The company had partnered with Hero Electric, Mahindra Electric and Piaggio, for its specific vehicles to be deployed for its first and last-mile deliveries.
Meanwhile, Flipkart had also announced a slew of measures on Wednesday to get more sellers on its platform. In order to ease the liabilities for sellers and free up their working capital, Flipkart reduced the payment cycle to sellers from earlier 15 days to 7-10 days. It also introduced a 10-minute onboarding service for sellers and an AI-led automated solution, which converts any product image to Flipkart-standard quality, for ease of listing and cataloguing.