Flipkart extends reach of pickup operations to 800 cities more

Home-grown ecommerce major Flipkart said on Thursday it has 'massively' expanded the reach of its pick-up operations in 800 additional cities and towns across the country in the last six months.

The initiative will help bring thousands of new sellers, MSMEs, domestic manufacturers, and artisans into the ecommerce fold, it said.

The Reach Project by Flipkart was initiated in February to rapidly scale up pick-up capabilities and to cater to seller requests in hitherto unserviceable parts of the country, the company said in a statement.

More than 60,000 sellers from these cities and towns were set to benefit from this expansion, especially as it came ahead of the crucial festive season, Flipkart said.

Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Jammu and Kashmir, Assam, and Tripura were among the states that will see the biggest impact from this initiative, it said.

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"In total, the new PIN code additions represent an almost 40 percent increase in serviceable cities pan-India. Particularly in Tier III and beyond cities and towns, the Reach Project has increased operations in serviceable PIN codes by almost 50 percent", the statement said.

Flipkart Group CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy said: This festive season is set to be the biggest ever for Flipkart and the ecosystem, and we are making a concerted effort to ensure that MSMEs, sellers, rural entrepreneurs, artisans and weavers are able to participate, capitalise, grow and prosper through the opportunities afforded by e-commerce and celebrate with the country as a whole.

Earlier this month, Flipkart also announced that it has created a Hindi language platform for the first time. As internet penetration reaches Bharat, the challenge facing brands and companies is to effectively capture the Tier II, III, and IV markets and serve the next 200 million internet users in India. 

Jeyandran Venugopal, Senior Vice-President, Consumer Experience and Platform, Flipkart, told YourStory, “There is an explosion of digital content in various Indian languages and most of them use visual elements.”

(Edited by Megha Reddy)

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